MAINE
Portland Press Herald
By PAUL KENDRICK
FREEPORT – A Jesuit is pope.
I am Jesuit-educated.
I am a graduate of Cheverus High School (1968) and Fairfield University (1972).
Yet I do not find myself swept up in the excitement that Jesuit priests and Jesuit alumni are expressing, now that “one of our own” is the first ever Jesuit to be elected pope.
The word “Jesuit” is often synonymous with social justice and a deep concern for the poor and vulnerable. My Jesuit teachers taught me that the “service of my faith must include the promotion of justice.”
In a 2000 speech at Santa Clara University, the Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, then head of the Jesuit Order, urged students to “let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering, and engage it constructively.”
The Rev. Kolvenbach noted that “solidarity with our less fortunate brothers and sisters … is learned through ‘contact’ rather than through ‘concepts.’ When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the degradation and injustice others suffer is the catalyst for solidarity, which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry, reflection and action.”
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