Jesuit General to resign in 2016 due to advanced age.And the Society of Jesus? Still aging, and still shrinking.

Today's announcement by the Jesuit Curia that the General of their Order, Fr. Adolfo Nicolas SJ, will be resigning in late 2016 due to "advanced age" naturally raises the question: how are the Jesuits doing? How many Jesuits are there, after 49 years of aggiornamento and of the post-Conciliar "springtime"?

As of January 1, 2014, according to a report published on March 25 in Populi (citing statistics published on that same day by the Society of Jesus), there were 16,986 Jesuits worldwide: 12,107 priests, 1,331 lay brothers, 2,842 scholastics and 706 novices: a decrease of 268 members over the previous year. The report itself is deceptively titled "Gesuiti, aumentano le vocazioni" -- "Jesuits, an increase of vocations" -- due to there being 706 Jesuit novices as of Jan. 1, 2014 as compared to 699 in 2012. (The source for the figure of 699 novices is not given.)

Unfortunately even that little statistic does not seem to be accurate, insofar as pre-2014 figures are concerned. A complete set of statistics from 1974 to 2013 on the website of the Jesuit Curia, published on April 10, 2013 gives a slightly different picture: As of Jan. 1, 2013, there were a total of 17,287 Jesuits: 12,298 priests, 1,400 lay brothers, 2,878 scholastics and 711 novices. 

If the Populi statistics for Jan. 1, 2014 are accurate, then the real decrease of Jesuits since Jan. 1, 2013 has been by 301 members (and not 268), and there has been a decrease of 5 novices rather than an increase of 7 novices. Priests, lay brothers, and scholastics also saw a diminution of their numbers

And how many Jesuits were there in 1966? There were 36,038, of whom 20,301 were priests. (Source.) 

"Springtime" update: Before the Council, science; after the Council, death.

Mother of Science, of the University, and of Beauty, the Catholic Church has always been at the forefront of the search for Truth. No wonder that, in 1904, priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus founded the Ebro Observatory (Observatori de l'Ebre, in Catalan, Observatorio del Ebro, in Spanish), a groundbreaking project for the study of the Sun, in Roquetes (Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain). As the Observatory's website itself recalls:

The Ebro Observatory is a research Institute founded by the Society of Jesus in 1904 to study the Sun-Earth relationships. It is a nonprofit Foundation associated with the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) since its inception. It has continuously maintained collaboration with the National Meteorological Institute (INM) since 1920. Recently, it has started collaboration with other institutions, like the National Technical Aerospace Institute and the Cartographic Institute of Catalonia.

The Observatory was, by itself, one of those structures that defy anti-Catholic prejudices, both in the beautiful presence of Catholic priests dedicated to scientific research and in its very foundation, in a time and place condemned by outsiders as examples of "darkness": not only a Jesuit foundation, but a Jesuit foundation in early 20th Century Spain, the humiliated post-imperial Spain of 1898.

Following fifty years of Conciliar "Springtime", however, there are not many Jesuits now left in the Observatory. The Observatory announced the following in the end of November:

After more than [one] hundred years of active presence at the Ebro Observatory, the staff of the Society of Jesus will leave our Center. Due to a restructuring of the Society of Jesus, the last Jesuits who are working at the Observatory - father Luis Felipe Alberca, father Ernest Sanclement and brother Isidre Moncal - will move to Barcelona later this year. The Observatory, along with the City of Roquetes, is preparing an event of recognition and farewell as thanks for their work at the Center, and in general in this region, for many years. This event will be held on December 14 in the Landerer’s Building of the Observatory. Also, an exhibition has been prepared at the Library of the Observatory for this event and it can be visited until December 30.

It is probably all the fault of the pre-Conciliar world itself: as George Weigel said in July, in pre-Conciliar Spain, "Catholic intellectual life withered"...

[Image: the Ebro Observatory was, in the 1920s, one of the foremost Jesuit research centers in Spain.]

K is for...nothing Just what Europe needs: in Louvain, Catholic not even in name only

The largest and historically most prestigious University in the Low Countries, the University of Louvain (the Dutch-speaking university, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Flanders, from which most French-speaking aspects were transferred to a smaller sister-university in Wallonia in 1970) is about to change its name - and more. From Flemish student newspaper Veto (excerpts):

"KU Leuven - University of Leuven" [in English]. This is probably the new name of the university. A consensus has been reached in the university to keep the K, but to remove all references to the name Catholic. The proposed [new] mission statement of the university also includes independence from the Church and proactive openness.