In the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church, until Pope Francis, no Jesuit priest had ever been elevated to the papacy by the College of Cardinals.
The Jesuits, or the Society of Jesus as it’s also known, were founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1540. Jesuits are the largest order in the church and their focus on education, social justice and challenging the status quo have led them to be labeled by many conservatives in the Catholic Church as liberal or progressive.
For more than 600 years, there has been a back-and-forth struggle between church reformers and others who want to maintain the status quo.
The leader of the Jesuit order in North America, D.C.-based Rev. Brian Paulson, serves as its provincial. He said the late Pope Francis embraced this role as a social warrior who tirelessly advocated for refugees, the poor, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community.
“His legacy, his signature move has been to try invite us to be a more listening church, on all levels,” Paulson said.
“He’s going to be remembered for his (writings) from 2015 on the care for the environment. It’s just eloquent, it’s science-based. … It was a distress cry, Paulson added. “His important writings have a profound social analysis in them.”
Paulson said the pope also took on conservatives in the church when it came to gay rights, by authorizing the blessing of same sex relationships.
“Pope Francis has been a more pastoral pontiff,” Paulson said. “His first programmatic encyclical, which came out in November of 2013, was called the ‘Joy of the gospel.’ … And there’s a line in there that I love: ‘The Joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, emptiness’ and they are filled with love … and then they live lives with Christ.'”
The move was embraced by some Catholics for its inclusive nature, but others, many in North America, complained the pope did not move further and faster.
“He would say you should do theology by listening to the people: How do people pray? How do they live? What are their joys? What are their sorrows?” Paulson told WTOP.
“When he writes, you see those Jesuit roots of his, in that he takes his own personal religious experience personally,” he added.
St. Ignatius and the Jesuits believe you can find God in all things, and Paulson believes Francis was called to the job at the right time, not only as the first Jesuit to be selected as pope, but also the first from South America, ending a centuries-old tradition of selecting a pope from Europe.
“The foundation of Jesuit life … is the spiritual exercise of St. Ignatius of Loyola,” Paulson said. “Jesuits are practical and … there was a sense that the Vatican needed deep reform. And I think they felt that Pope Francis had been a very successful archbishop of Buenos Aires. He had been a Jesuit provincial, very young in his late 30s.”
Paulson said he travels to the Vatican at least three times a year for church-related business and he has met the pope and spoken with him on various occasions. He recalled one meeting during which Pope Francis met specifically with Jesuit priests, and afterward, the two priests had a moment together.
“I have a photo that is precious to me,” Paulson said, describing the moment when the two spoke. “I said to him … ‘I thank you for your service,’ and he gave me that little Pope smile that he had.”
Paulson said he believes Pope Francis served the church and the world with diligence and love, and his papacy will be looked upon kindly by history.
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