The Jesuit Pope

Francis, Bishop of Rome, Servant of the Servants of God, is a member of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits.

Let's watch Cardinal Tauran again (1:06:46), followed by the Pope (1:16:45). You should be able to drop the scrubber quite easily.




By the way here is something odd from the Catholic News Service on 11th March, on the language of the announcement of which Cardinal has been elected. For most of the article they assume it will be in the accusative (object of habemus)

It also is possible that Cardinal Tauran will not use the accusative case when he announces the name. He could say, “Marcus” instead of “Marcum” if the cardinals choose Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who has been prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

"It also is possible that Cardinal Tauran will not use the accusative case when he announces the name." Only if he is a complete idiot, which, as it turned out, he is not. The Vatican News wesbsite (more sources, even more complicated than last time) tells us that the "annuntio vobis" dates back to the election of Martin V in 1417.

Anyway back to the new Pope.

The Jesuits – his religious order – are a standing joke in the Catholic Church. The behaviour of some of them leads to the order being a byword for smug infidelity.

On the other hand, growing up in England, it was difficult not to feel the highest admiration for the Jesuits who risked (and often suffered), the most horrifying form of death in order to bring the Mass to the Catholics during the penal period: Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, Nicholas Owen and the others. Americans and Canadians will remember Isaac Jogues and the other Jesuits who were martyred bringing the Gospel to the native tribes of North America. The affection for such predecessors spills over into an affection for the modern members of the order, however absurd. At least it does in my case.

Pope Francis' predecessor, Paul VI, had this to say to the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus in 1975:

Wherever in the Church, even in the most difficult and extreme fields, in the crossroads of ideologies, in the front line of social conflict, there has been and there is confrontation between the deepest desires of the human person and the perennial message of the Gospel, there also there have been, and there are, Jesuits.

I offer the following mischievous "translation": Wherever some ninny is causing trouble and disrupting things in the Church, you can bet your last penny there is a Jesuit at the bottom of it.