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from issue no. 03 - 2003

The Annuary of the Jesuits for 2003

At the four corners of the world


The Annuary of the Jesuits for 2003


by Gianni Valente


The Annuary of the Jesuits for 2003

The Annuary of the Jesuits for 2003

If you want a snapshot of what the Jesuits are in the world today, all you have to do is browse the pages of the Annuary published by the Curia General in Borgo Santo Spirito under the editorship of Father José Maria de Vera, head of the Press Office. The 2003 edition is full of news and surprises right from the image printed on the cover: an anonymous painting of 1611, found in an attic in Nagasaki only seventy years ago, where it had been hidden when the persecution of the Christians began in Japan. In the picture, Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier are portrayed beneath Our Lady and the Most High, framed by fifteen scenes of the mysteries of the Rosary.
Leafing through the 160 illustrated pages, one comes across an anthological sequence of the variety of stories, enterprises and initiatives that flourish at the four corners of the world, resulting from that «group of friends in the Lord», as Ignatius and Francis Xavier described the Society. One goes from the publication of the Gran Ricci Chinese-French dictionary, the largest in a western language, printed in 2002, to the Frontier House between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where the Jesuits have set up the “Solidaridad Fronteriza” center to help Haitian clandestine immigrants. One comes across Father Federico, who once a week gathers children from the parish of Onoda in Japan «to listen to the story of Jesus», or Doctor Dominique Peccoud, who spends his Jesuit vocation working in Geneva as special counselor in the direction of the International Office for Labor, the United Nations body that deals with the international norms for labor and that adopted the principles of the encyclical Rerum novarum from its foundation.
Numerous articles dwell on the urban vocation in the Jesuit tradition. Ignatius of Loyola himself ordained that Jesuits’ houses be sited in the heart of the city, where life-styles and cultural patterns are born and change and where today, as Father de Vera remarks in his introduction, «the sound of the bells calling people to prayer has died away». To give an example, the City Service Team that works in Camden, the second poorest city in the United States, still follows Ignatius’s indication with creative fidelity. In the decay of the Hispanic and Afro-American ghettos, real fourth-world islands in the heart of opulence, the group of Jesuits centered on the Holy Name parish provides imaginative alternatives to the devastating social deprivation, from medical care and legal aid for the unprotected to computer courses for youngsters at risk. As has so often happened in the history of the Jesuits, there too witness to Jesus Christ takes the form of speaking and doing quite other things.
In the final pages, the section called “Testimonies” tells the story of Father Luis Ruiz Suárez, volcanic “deus ex machina” of the Casa Ricci in Macao, who, after decades working to help Chinese and Vietnamese refugees, since 1985 has been co-ordinating the opening of aid centers for lepers that have rapidly multiplied throughout continental China (see interview with Father Kolvenbach). And has only one worry about the near future: he’s soon going to be ninety and the traffic police have told him he’s going to have to leave in the garage the scooter he’s been using to go up and down the steep slopes of Macao.


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