![]() He has taught us that the Church doesn’t need to be simply critical but more understanding, and his lifestyle of living and working with the people has helped the Church get comfortable with the rest of the world,” says Fr Rocha, making it clear that the revolutionary Jesuit streak in Pope Francis, formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, will inspire him to challenge and question certain practices in the Church so that it finds its place in today’s world. His lovely sense of humour and affable demeanor makes a tremendous impact on the people he meets. “Pope Francis is a merciful Pope and a pastor at heart. Fr Rosario Rocha, provincial (head) of the Goa province, which is the third oldest Jesuit province in the world, is both elated and proud to say that the Catholic Church is in the safe hands of the first Jesuit to ever become head of the Catholic Church. It was only in 1928, when Dom Matheus de Oliveira Xavier invited two Jesuits to the Rachol seminary, that the Jesuits finally returned to Goa. Even then, they had to function from Belgaum. French-speaking Belgian Jesuits re-built the society in Bengal, but it took the Portuguese Jesuits 75 more years before they could return to the Goa province in 1889. German Jesuits initiated the restoration process in Bombay, but after their incarceration during WWII, the Spanish Jesuits took over the mission. ![]() The French were allotted Madurai, while the Italians were to help re-establish the society in Karnataka. On August 7, 1814, Pope Pius VII issued a decree Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum, confirming the universal restoration of the Society of Jesus, but much before his official announcement, the Black Pope (as the superior general of the Jesuits is sometimes referred to) had already assigned missions to his men. Their sharing of experiences from different missions enriched the zeal for their noble vocation, and only when Duke Ferdinand of Parma invited the Spanish Jesuit, Fr Joseph Pignatelli (also known as the ‘second founder of the society’), to start a novitiate in his city, they sensed the end of the forced exodus was near. Stripped of their permission to conduct any apostolic activities, they spent those 41 years in deep study and reading. The Society’s properties and institutions were confiscated, and handed over to the archdiocese. Goa, then a Portuguese colony, was the first affected by the Papal sanction, and as many as 131 Jesuits were detained and sent back to Europe. Throughout India, too, European Jesuits kept their vow of obedience to the Pope and left the country. In Kerala, the king of Travancore too ignored the sanction, but the Jesuits left of their own accord. In Russia, meanwhile, the tsar refused to uphold the sanction of the Catholic Church, and many American Jesuits took refuge there. Its members around the world were rounded up and deported back to Papal territories in Europe. In 1773, the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits, witnessed the end of their ‘glory days’.
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