Election of Jesuit Superior General

Date:                January 22, 2008

To:                   The John Carroll University Community

From:                Robert L. Niehoff, S.J.
                        President

I am pleased to share with you the news that this past Saturday, January 19, Father Adolfo Nicolás, S.J. was elected Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Father Nicolás succeeds Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J. serving as the 30th Superior General since the Society’s founding 1540.

Father Nicolás is a man from Asia, a theologian from Japan, but born in Palencia, Spain on April 29, 1936.

He joined the Society of Jesus in the novitiate of Aranjuez, a small village close to Madrid, in 1953.  After completing his studies in philosophy in Alcalá, he was sent to Japan in 1960 to immerse himself in Japanese language and culture. He did his theological studies at Sophia University, Tokyo, and was ordained priest on the 17th March 1967 in Tokyo.

After earning a degree in theology from the Gregorian University, he returned to Japan and became professor of systematic theology at Sophia University.  From 1978 to 1984, he served the director of the Pastoral Institute in Manila, Philippines, and then as Rector of the house for young Asian Jesuit students of theology in Tokyo.  From 1993 to 1999, he served as Provincial of the Jesuit Province of Japan.

After completing his term as provincial, Fr. Nicolás spent the next three years working in a poor immigrant parish in Tokyo.   In 2004, he was appointed President of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania, a region that stretches from China and Myanmar in the west, to Korea in the North, Australia in the south, and Micronesia in the east—in incredibly diverse group of cultures.

Some share that electing Fr. Nicolas with such a history and experience rich in mission and service “…is as if the Society would like to re-affirm once more its missionary character and its commitment to all peoples and cultures.”

I invite all members of the university, either as individuals or in community, to share a special prayer or hymn of thanksgiving. Following is an official prayer from the Congregation:

Lord in your providence you guided St. Ignatius to found the Society of Jesus.  Enrich it, we pray, with gifts of heart, mind and spiritu.  Make us all one with you in holiness and love, that we may discern your will and carry it out with constancy and faith.  We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

As a way of supporting the Jesuits during this time, JCU will maintain a lighted candle in the Lady Chapel of St. Francis for the duration of GC 35.

Continuing information on the election and General Congregation 35 can be found at http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/GC35/.