Father Julio Fernández Techera, Jesuit priest and rector of the Catholic University of Uruguay (UCU), wrote a critical essay about the Society of Jesus, warning that the order, founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in 1534, is in “profound decline.” ”.
This was indicated by the 57-year-old priest in a text titled For our use III, addressed to his Jesuit brothers. The document, which originally would have circulated within the Society of Jesus, was published by Spanish journalist Francisco José Fernández de la Cigoña on his blog at Infovaticana.
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This is the third document in a series that Father Fernández Techera began on April 22, 2022, when he wrote his first essay (For Our Use)highlighting that for a long time he has felt dissatisfied with the situation of the Society of Jesus, specifying that he is not going through a vocational crisis nor is he thinking about leaving.
He published the second essay a year later and is dated April 27, 2023. In this text he thanks the many responses he received, also from young Jesuits, and even from some who did not agree with him, but thanked him. the opportunity to debate and propose a revision.
The third essay by Father Fernández Techera is dated April 22, 2024, “Feast of Saint Mary, Mother of the Company of Jesus.”
The new writing has the subtitle “Some considerations about the The State of Society 2023“, In reference to general report offered by the superior general of the Society of Jesusin this case the Venezuelan priest Arturo Sosa, in collaboration with the attorneys, with whom he met in May of last year in Loyola (Spain).
Sexual abuse scandals in the Jesuit community: emblematic cases
“The Company is experiencing very worrying situations that seem not to have been discussed in the Congregation of Attorneys and that do not appear clearly and assumed in the report. Of State. To give some examples. In December 2022 we learned of what an Italian Jesuit called, the Tsunami Rupnik”says Father Fernández Techera in his writing.
Marko Rupnik is a priest expelled from the Society of Jesus in 2023—accused since 2018 of having committed serious sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse against at least 20 women in the Loyola Community that he co-founded in Slovenia—and who continues to appear as a Jesuit and Vatican consultant on the 2024 Pontifical Yearbook.
Father Fernández Techera then refers to the “scandal” of “abuse against minors committed by some Jesuits in Bolivia, and the alleged cover-up of several provincials who were accused before the Prosecutor’s Office of that country. We have had to find out about everything through the press and we have not received a single statement or letter from the General Curia explaining what happened or to ask for prayers for the province of Bolivia.”
The main accused in this case is the priest Alfonso Pedrajas, known as “Padre Pica”, who kept a diary about the abuses he perpetrated against more than 80 minors in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.
Jesuits and the fall in the number of vocations
Father Fernández Techera points out in his writing that “other urgent issues that were not dealt with clearly and forcefully are: the drop in the number of admissions to the Company, which in the West worsens year by year, as well as the high number of abandonment of members of the order.”
“Recently a companion told me that 72 novices entered his province in the last ten years. In the same period, the Jesuits who left the Company in his province were 71”, he adds and states that “in 2023, 314 novices entered the entire Company, and 319 died”.
The priest also specifies that there are currently 13,995 Jesuits, and laments that “in a few years the Company will have disappeared from several European countries and will become insignificant in others in Europe, America and Oceania,” and highlights that it is only growing in Africa.
In 2013the Jesuits numbered more than 17,200, which means that in just over 10 years, the Society of Jesus has decreased by more than three thousand members.
For the Uruguayan priest, “the problem is not only that many die and few enter, but also that we do not know how to retain many of those who enter.”
“The reason why we do not have vocations is not because of the secularized society, the change of times and a thousand other excuses. The reason is that these conditions of our time have cowed us, they overwhelm us and we do not know how to respond to today’s challenges with the drive and creativity of yesterday,” he warns.
The Jesuits have become a “progressive NGO”
In the opinion of Father Fernández Techera, the “too biased vision” of the general report on the Society of Jesus “could perfectly be the view of the world of a think tank secular, linked to a left-wing political party or a progressive NGO.”
“One does not find in that contemplation anything of the supernatural or transcendent gaze that would be expected from a religious, apostolic and priestly order,” he laments.
“There are many signs in the current life of Jesuit works, the documents that are published and the guidelines that are given, that give the impression that we are in an NGO and not in a religious order,” says the member of the Jesus company.
The problem of Jesuit identity: “We keep asking ourselves who we are”
The Uruguayan priest also comments that “this year it will be fifty years since every time we Jesuits meet we begin to see who we are, what we are for.”
“If what the document indicates (The State of Society) That’s right, the Company’s problem is more serious than we might think. If Jesuits of all generations and all cultural backgrounds have doubts about their identity, we are finished. Clearly it is not my experience, and I think it is not that of many Jesuits I know,” highlights the rector of the UCU.
“Today, Jesuits in many places are shameful, secretive, timid priests, without apostolic zeal. And so no one gets excited,” says the Uruguayan priest.
For the rector of the UCU, “the problem is that many in the Company, including major superiors, have problems assuming what is proper to our religious, apostolic and priestly identity, as well as the ministries of the Company.”
The Society of Jesus “is in deep decline”
In the opinion of the Uruguayan Jesuit, the Society of Jesus “is in deep decline. He doesn’t know, or he doesn’t want to know, which is the same thing. He wants to believe that this is the situation of all the other realities of the Church that surround it and that therefore it is what it should be.
In his opinion, the Company’s government “fears that if it speaks clearly to the entire order, its members will suffer and become discouraged. “He prefers to maintain the fiction that things are going well rather than risk recognizing the religious and apostolic decadence of the Society.”
Regarding the general report of the Jesuits for 2023, Father Fernández Techera highlights that “in this entire long document, of more than 24 thousand words, the word priest never appears and only twice priesthood, although to make a reference distinguishing between the priesthood in the Society and the diocesan priesthood.”
“I think our attitude is suicidal: we want vocations for the priesthood in the Society, but we don’t want to talk about being priests.”
At the end of his text, the Uruguayan priest emphasizes that “we have a wonderful and necessary charisma for the Church, a religious, apostolic and priestly charisma. We have to recover it and live it with passion, courage and generosity.”
“To achieve this it is necessary to speak more freely, express clearly what we live and think, stop being politically correct and use clichés and slogans”.
To conclude, Father Fernández Techera prays to God to “grant us in this time a living hope to believe that, if we put ourselves in his hands and are faithful, we can still rise again and once again be a great service to his Church.”
ACI Prensa contacted the General Curia of the Jesuits in Rome to request their impressions on the writing of Father Fernández Techera. Until the publication of this news, no response has been received.
Apostolic visit to the Jesuits
In a writing published in March 2022, the late Cardinal George Pell, under the pseudonym Demossuggested carrying out an apostolic visit or investigation to the Society of Jesus.
The cardinal explained that he considered this necessary because “the Order is highly centralized, susceptible to being reformed or ruined from above.”
In the early 1980s the Jesuits were investigated for the last time. It was Pope Saint John Paul II who personally intervened in the government of the Company, removing Father Pedro Arrupe from the position of superior general.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.