Choosing the Middle Way

The Jesuits pick a scholarly ascetic as their leader

Votes on the first ballot were still being counted when the 211 electors who had gathered at Jesuit headquarters in Rome began to applaud. By an overwhelming margin, the general congregation of the Society of Jesus last week chose its new superior general: the Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, 54, a Dutch priest highly respected within the church's largest religious order of men (26,000 members) for his piety, scholarship and skills as a prudent diplomat.

By selecting Kolvenbach as the 28th successor to the society's founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuits may have resolved a point of tension with the Pope: How active should they become in politics? Pope John Paul II has warned all priests against becoming too political, although acknowledging that they have a duty to promote social justice. Father Pedro Arrupe, Kolvenbach's predecessor, encouraged social activity by Jesuits in the U.S. and Latin America. John Paul has also been nettled by Jesuits who question church teachings. When Arrupe, 75, was incapacitated by a stroke in 1981, the Pope suspended the Jesuits' rules by removing Arrupe's choice as interim leader and naming two temporary administrators. After the election, Kolvenbach reportedly told his fellow Jesuits: "I am going to do a lot of listening. I'm not going to make any statements about Latin America or anywhere else until I find out the facts from people who have been there firsthand."

John Paul was the first person outside the congregation to learn of its choice; he was telephoned the news while on a visit to Austria. Although the Pope does not know Kolvenbach, the Vatican had approved his 1981 appointment as rector of Rome's Pontifical Oriental Institute. Kolvenbach became a trusted adviser to Wladyslaw Cardinal Rubin, the Polish prelate who heads the Vatican congregation that supervises the church's Eastern rites.

Kolvenbach has a special interest in these churches. Born in Druten, a small village in east Holland, he went to Lebanon as a missionary in 1958; there he became an expert in Armenian (he is fluent in seven other languages). Kolvenbach later earned a doctorate in Armenian in Paris, spent a year of spiritual study at a Jesuit center in Pomfret, Conn., then returned to Beirut as a professor at St. Joseph's University. He later headed the Jesuits' Middle East province (Lebanon, Syria and Egypt). "Father Kolvenbach is a classic Jesuit," says an official in Rome who knows him well, "studious, reserved yet militant, with that touch of the mysterious that characterizes the order." He is also an ascetic who, colleagues say, sleeps on the floor, clears dishes, carries luggage for guests and often walks six miles to say Mass for a group of nuns.

After his election, Kolvenbach quoted to friends a passage from St. Teresa of Avila: "Let nothing bother you, let nothing dismay you." He did not finish the quotation: "Everything passes ... Patience gains all... God alone is enough." A fitting motto, perhaps, as the Society of Jesus enters a new era. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.