Return of the Jesuits

RETURN OF THE JESUITS

September 14, 2014 

One of the most prominent Catholic orders in India granted their significant contribution to education in this county, the expulsion of the Jesuits by a Portuguese Decree 255 years ago had a profound historical impact on Goa. Francis Xavier was the first Jesuit to set foot here. In Goa where they left behind an indelible footprint through the Basilica de Bom Jesus, the Rachol Seminary, the first printing press in the college of St Paul (that crumbled to ruins), the scores of parish churches and even the old Patto bridge (built between 1632-1634)- to list just a few, the suppression of the Jesuits proved costly to Goa. The State lost out on top-notch Jesuit educational institutions that came to be set up in other parts of the country. The Jesuits would return to Goa formally only in 1993. As the society celebrates 200 years of its restoration this year, Herald Review looks back at a turning point in history. 


LISA ANN MONTEIRO


On the evening of September 27 the Jesuits from the Goa province will celebrate a mass at the Basilica de Bom Jesus to mark 200 years of their restoration. Celebrations are very low key and have been going on in the form of seminars and talks through the year.

“ This is not an occasion to glorify ourselves but it calls us to revisit our past and reflect on why we were suppressed and how loyal we have been to our vocation and what’s our role now,” says Fr Gregory Naik SJ. At the time of their expulsion, the Jesuits ran a large number of parish churches and educational, charitable, social and religious institutions that they had set up in Goa. Overnight they found their lands confiscated to the state and others entrusted to the archdiocese. These were never restored to their original owners. The Goa province of the Jesuits as it is known now was re- established only in 1993 and is today the third smallest province in India with Delhi and Pune after it.

The peculiarity, Fr Naik says, is that although they are small in number, they have generously given some of their best men for work the world over.

Fateful decree 
The fate of Jesuits in Goa changed on September 25, 1759 when a ship arrived with a copy of the royal decree ordering the arrest of all Jesuits in Portugal and its colonies and seizure of all properties belonging to them on the fabricated charge of their complicity in a plot to murder the king The events unfolded rather quickly within the next two days. All the Jesuits were rounded up and kept as prisoners in St Paul’s College ( the new one). In Salcete, the Jesuits were first locked up at Rachol for two months and then sent to join their colleagues. Some prisoners were distributed among houses belonging to other religious orders and were not treated well there.

“ After a year all the prisoners were returned to St Paul’s as the transport ship Nossa Senhora de Conçeicão was to arrive. When it did, the 137 prisoners were loaded on it, a ship meant for maximum 100, an on December 19, 1760 it departed on a journey that lasted five torturous months. The conditions on the ship were so unhealthy and subhuman that by the time it reached Lisbon 24 Jesuits had died and were buried a sea,” Fr Naik writes in his compilation The Goa Jesuits - A concise account of the origins of the Goa Province.

The Jesuits who arrived in Lisbon faced no trial, but were told they could save themselves by leaving their society. The Portuguese- born were exiled to papal states in Italy. The others were sent to S Juliao da Barra jail where they suffered.

In Portugal, the orders for the expulsion of the Jesuits came from the Portuguese Prime Minister Sebastião Jose de Carvalho e Mello who was later made the Marquis of Pombal. Jealous of Jesuit influence, he also wanted the church to be subordinate to the state.

On September 3, 1758 there was an attempt on the life of King Joseph I on the outskirts of Lisbon when he was returning after an evening with his mistress who married into the influential Tavora family. The Duke of Aveiro and the Marquises of Tavora were arrested, tortured, executed and their bodies burnt and thrown into a river.

On January 19, 1759 the king ordered that all Jesuit property be confiscated and three months later on April 20, 1759 all Jesuits were exiled as rebels and traitors. They were accused of rebelling against Portugal and Spain in the treaty of the Paraguay Reductions, refusing to yield to civil authority in Brazil, corruption, commercial activities forbidden to clerics, the defamation of the king abroad and making an attempt on his life.

Portugal was the first European country to expel Jesuits with others following its example. France suppressed the Jesuits in 1764 and Spain in 1767. It was only much later on July 21, 1773 that Pope Clement XIV under pressure suppressed the society worldwide through the brief Dominus ac Redemptor.

Ironically Catherine II of Russia, an Orthodox and Frederick of Prussia, a Lutheran ignored the brief of suppression of the society in their kingdoms because they wanted to keep the Jesuit institutions running. Many Jesuits continued to work in Europe during the suppression affiliated to the Russia province and with their superior based in Russia.

Pre expulsion the Jesuits were at the zenith of their influence on European society. They controlled the world of education and were confessors to kings.

In Goa too, the society was a very vibrant one. In fact the Goa province was the third oldest ( and the first outside Europe) of the Jesuits after Portugal and Spain.

St Francis Xavier was the first Jesuit to arrive in Goa in 1542. The professed house or Casa Professa ( the heart of the society) of the Jesuits who had completed their final stage is attached to the Basilica.

The Casa Professa was built approximately in 1585, before the Basilica was built. It was the only professed house in entire East Asia.

“ It was confiscated along with all the other properties of the religious and returned to the church only in 1940. A Jesuit was appointed rector of the Basilica only in 1956. There were only administrators before that,” Fr Savio Baretto, present rector of the Basilica says. The present structure is believed to be only one third of the original one.

In 1555 the Goa territory consisting Ilhas, Bardez and Salcete was distributed among the existing three orders for the purpose of the apostolate. The Franciscans were in charge of Bardez and the Jesuits were given charge of entire Salcete and 15 villages in the north western sector of Ilhas. The Dominicans were given the other villages in the Ilhas.

Contribution to Goa 
The Jesuits ministered in Salcete for over 200 years and this became their mainstay. They built 25 churches in this taluka. The Seminary of Rachol was built by the Jesuits where they ran a college with a hospital, orphanage, catechetical school, primary school in Portuguese, Konkani school for European missionaries, moral theology and the first printing press.

In Ilhas, the Jesuits acquired the Seminary of Santa Fe, consecrated the church of the college in honour of St Paul and it came to be known as the College of St Paul. The Jesuits who worked there were called Paulistas.

“ The college housed a novitiate, a Jesuit residence, a hospital, a dormitory for catechumens and a good library. Besides academics, the college was the hub of Jesuit activity in the east. It was the church of this college that had the privilege of having the first public exposition of the incorrupt body of Francisco Xavier soon after it arrived from Malacca,” Savio Rodrigues writes in Jesuit Heritage in Goa.

When the plague broke out in Old Goa in 1570 the college was abandoned and a new one built near the convent of St Augustine which came to be known as the new College of St Paul.

The medical department of the College of St Paul was credited with running the Royal Hospital and the expertise of the engineering department was used in building the Rua de Ourem and Ponte de Linhares, considered a marvel of engineering at the time.

The awaited Bull
The Jesuits celebrate 200 years of the restoration of their faith this year thanks to Pope Pius VII who after returning from captivity in France by Napoleon signed the papal Bull Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum ( The Care of all Churches) on August 7, 1814 which restored the society.

The situation in Portugal however didn’t receive immediate respite because of its antireligious rulers.

In spite of the Bull, the Portuguese government refused to permit Jesuits to settle in Goa. So although there were four flourishing Jesuit missions in Madurai, Bombay- Poona, Bengal and Mangalore, the Goa mission came into existence only on December 3, 1889 and was operating from Belgaum. Fr Naik writes, “ In fact between 1891 and 1908 the total number in the Goa mission at any one time fluctuated between five and nine Jesuits.” In 1928 the Archbishop Patriarch Dom Mateus d’ Oliveira Xavier asked for two Jesuits to be sent to Rachol Seminary. Fr Bernardo Gonçalves was installed as spiritual director in 1931 and he became the first Jesuit to permanently reside in Goa but not in a house of the society.

In Portugal in 1932 when the Estado Novo party came to power, Dr Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was appointed Prime Minister. When he promulgated a new constitution, he permitted the return of religious orders.

On March 19, 1934, 40 prominent citizens, mostly from Margao, submitted a joint petition to Patriarch Dom Teotonio Vieira de Castro stating the Jesuits had given “ incontestable proof of their competence as educators” and therefore they should set up a school or small boarding in Panjim as soon as possible. The signatories were lead by Dr Antonio Augustro do Rego of Panjim and included Sales da Veiga Coutinho, Felippe da Piedade Rebelo, Cesar Baronio Monteiro, Antonio Colaço, Francisco Correia Afonso among others. The original letter drafted in Portuguese lies in the archives of the Jesuit House in Panjim.

The Jesuit provincial of Portugal regretted that no Jesuits could be spared at the time. But the citizens persisted and when they read of Fr Estanislau Martins coming from Portugal they insisted he be assigned to Goa. The patriarch passed on the message to the superior general in Rome and his response was positive.

Post restoration 
Three Jesuits Fr Silvestre de Souza ( a Goan) superior, Fr Estanislau Martins, director of the school and Bro Vincent Augustine, administrator rented a small house at Fontainhas “ at the left end of the Rua do Povo de Lisboa facing the canal flowing into the Mandovi”. Twenty boys were admitted as boarders and 30 enrolled as day scholars in the lyceum.

The Insituto de Sao Francisco Xavier was founded on July 2, 1935 and the Jesuits in Goa got their first residence in the restored society.

The institute turned out to be a failure because the director lacked experience and aptitude to deal with the youth.

Eight years later it shut. They continued to struggle because of their small numbers.

They managed to restore the faith the people had in them when they began running St Theotonius Union High School in Margao in 1944— the present Loyola High School.

In Mapusa they rechristened the Sacred Heart High School as St Brittos High School in 1948. Today they also run the Xavier Retreat House in Baga, St Paul’s School in Belgaum and Rosary English High School in Ajra. They have the Pedro Arrupe Insitute in Raia, their own research centre the Xavier Centre of Historical Research in Porvorim and have greatly contributed to Konkani through the Thomas Stephen’s Konknni Kendr. The Jesuits also run the Jana Jagran, a social action wing where they work with shepherds and nomadic groups and also impart non formal education to them.

Jesuit presence 

There are 16987 Jesuits worldwide serving in 112 nations on six continents with the largest number in India and the USA. The South Asian Assistancy ( of which India is a major portion and comprises 4044 Jesuits.

They have 79 provinces, 5 independent regions and 9 dependent regions in the world with 18 provinces and 2 regions in India.

The Jesuits run 178 universities/ colleges around the world, of which 72 are in the South Asian Assistancy of which more than 60 are in India.

The Goa province comprises 117 Jesuits ( 81 priests, 6 brothers, 27 scholastics and 3 novices).

Review Bureau 

link: http://epaperoheraldo.in/Details.aspx?id=7945&boxid=17515162&uid=&dat=09/14/2014