The Jesuits, 1534-1921

At this point Father Lievens stepped into the breach. He could speak all the languages: Bengali, Hindoo, Mundari and Ouraon; and he then plunged into a study of the laws and customs of the land; an apparently inextricable maze, but in less than a year he was master of the whole legal procedure then in force. Thus armed, he appeared in court whenever a victim was arraigned, and almost invariably won a verdict in his favor. His reputation spread, and the victims of the sharks flocked to him from all sides. He argued for all of them, without however, omitting his ministerial occupation of preaching, teaching, composing canticles, helping the needy, and seeking out souls everywhere. He cut out so much work for his associates that his superiors were in a panic. But he succeeded. The native Protestants came over in crowds, and there was a flood tide of conversions to the Faith. It cost him his life, indeed, for he died in 1892, overcome by his labors and privations, but he had started a great movement and two years after his death, the flock had grown from 16,000 to 61,312, with more than 2,566 catechumens preparing for baptism. To-day the district is absolutely unlike its former self. Sacred canticles have taken the place of the old pagan chants and immoral dances are unknown. Even the pagans who are in the majority do not dare to perform certain rites of theirs in public.

In a district of Chota-Nagpur other than that in which Lievens labored, the conversions are still more pronounced. Six missionaries are at work, and their catechumens number more than 25,000. They offered themselves in spite of the fact that the Rajah was in a rage with his subjects about it; beat many of them unmercifully, and flung them into jail. Indeed the English government had to intervene to stop him. If there were a sufficiency of priests, there would be no difficulty in converting the whole countryside. The last accounts available tell us that the inhabitants of fifteen villages have declared themselves Christians, and cut off their hair to let the world know that they have renounced idolatry. Fifty years ago there were in all Western Bengal only a few thousand Catholics. In 1904 there were 106,000; in the following year, 119,705; in 1906, 126,529. Chota-Nagpur alone has another 102,000 and the number could be doubled if twenty new missionaries were on the spot. Western Bengal has now 27 churches, 346 chapels, 124 schools and two great colleges. Working there, are 101 priests, 55 scholastics and 27 coadjutor brothers of the Society, along with 34 Christian Brothers and 158 Sisters.

When Bishop Steins left Bombay, his successor Mgr. Jean-Gabriel Meurin built the college already planned, and called it St. Francis Xavier's. The undertaking was a difficult one, for the schismatical Goanese numbered 40,000 out of the 60,00 °Catholics in the city, and their ecclesiastical leaders were not only indifferent to the project but refused to contribute anything to carry it out, just as if it had been a Moslem or a heretical establishment. The people, however, were better minded. Every one, Catholic, heathen and heretic, was eager to build the college, for Bombay was proud of being a great intellectual centre; and hence when the government promised to double what could be collected, the enthusiasm was general and money poured in. The Observatory still bears the name of the rich Parsee who built it.

The Bombay mission included Beluchistan up to the frontiers of Afghanistan; its southern limit was the Diocese of Poona. In this vast territory were native villages, military posts, Anglo-Indian settlements, Indo-Portuguese, and pure Hindoos. There were only about 33,00 °Christians to be found in this amalgam, excluding the 70,000 people of the Goanese allegiance. Four colleges were erected in the various districts of this territory, but, unlike the great establishments of Bombay and Calcutta, they were exclusively Catholic. They gave instructions respectively to 500, 690, 298, and 306 pupils. The girls of the two dioceses were also provided for and the high school population exceeded 10,000. The great advantage of this scheme was that it ate very rapidly into the schism through the children of the insurgents.

The Carmelites had been in Mangalore; but found it too hard to hold out against the Calvinists from Bâle who, in 1880 had twenty stations, sixty-five schools and an annual budget of half a million; consequently they begged the Holy See to call in the Jesuits. When the new missionaries arrived in December, 1879, the Carmelites went out to meet them in a ship hung with flags and bunting and, on landing, presented them to the enthusiastic multitude waiting on the shore. The college of St. Aloysius was immediately begun and opened its classes with 150 students. Thus it happened that the greatest part of St. Francis Xavier's territory had come back to the Society; German Jesuits being in Bombay, Belgians in Calcutta, French in Madura and Italians in Mangalore. In the latter mission out of a population of 3,685,000 there are to-day only 93,00 °Catholics, but there were 1,50 °Christian students in St. Aloysius' college in 1920. It might be noted that Mangalore has acquired a world wide reputation for its leper hospital which was founded by Father Müller, formerly of the New York province. In that district also there are more native priests than in any other part of India. They number 60 all told and take care of about 32 parishes. They are not pure-blood, however, for they bear distinctively Portuguese names, such as Coelho, Fernandes, Saldanha and Pinto. This growth of the native clergy is encouraging, but it would be a mistake to regard them as useful for spreading the Faith. They make relatively very few conversions. They leave that to outsiders. They merely hold on to what has been won for them by others.

In 1884, the college of Negapatam was transferred to Trichinopoly, the reason being that in the latter there was a Catholic population of 20,000. Of course, the Anglican educators of the city tried to prevent the move but failed. The college at one time had 1,800 pupils, and although there was a drop to 1,550 in 1905, because of new rivals in the field, the latest accounts place the attendance at 2,562. St. Xavier's high school in Tuticorin, in the Madura mission had 563 pupils in 1920, and St. Mary's erected in 1910 in the very heart of Brahmanism has 441. In Trichinopoly, the discipline and work of the students have attracted much attention, but especially the enterprise of the sodalists, who have formed twenty groups of catechists and are engaged in giving religious instruction to 700 children. Most notable, however, is the success of the college in overthrowing the caste barriers. Indeed the missionaries of the old days would look with amazement at the grouping in the class rooms of Brahmins, Vellalans, Odeayans, Kallans, Paravers and twenty other social divisions down to the very Pariahs, all studying in the same house and eating at the same table. There were walled divisions, at first; then screens; then benches, and now there is only an imaginary line between the grades which formerly could not come near each other without contamination.

Among these castes, the Brahmins display the greatest curiosity about things Christian, but like the rich young man in the Gospel when they hear the truth they turn sadly away. "Why did God permit me to meet you," said one of them, "if I am going to suffer both here and hereafter?" One of them at last yielded and took flight to the ecclesiastical seminary at Ceylon. When the news spread abroad, priests from the pagodas and professors from the national schools came to the college and stormed against the other catechumens but without avail. Another Brahmin declared himself a Christian the next year; three in 1896, three in 1897, four in 1898, six in 1899 and two in 1900. They all have a hard fight before them; for they are thrown out of their caste and are disinherited by their families. Two of these converts died, and there is a suspicion that at least one was poisoned. Already 60 Brahmins have been baptized and India is in an uproar about it. To those who know the country, these conversions are of more importance than that of a thousand ordinary people and it is almost amusing to learn that the well-known theosophist leader, Annie Besant, hastened back to India to denounce the Catholic Church for its effrontery. The incident, it is true, gave a new life to idol-worship but possibly it was the last gasp before death.

The Madura district had been taken over by the Fathers of the Foreign Missions, after the Jesuits had been suppressed in 1773. When the Pope, Pius VII, re-established the Society, insistent appeals were made by those devoted and overtaxed missionaries to have the Jesuits resume their old place in that part of the Peninsula. The petition was heeded and the Jesuits returned to Madura in 1837. They were confronted by a frightful condition of affairs. In spite of the heroic labors of their immediate predecessors, there were scandals innumerable, and a large part of the population had lapsed into the grossest superstition and idolatry. The missionaries were well received at first, but a fulmination from Goa incited the people to rebellion. Moreover their labors were so crushing that four of the Fathers died of exhaustion in the year 1843 alone. Little by little however a change of feeling began to manifest itself, and as early as 1842, there were 118,40 °Catholics in the mission, many of them converts from Protestantism and paganism. In 1847 Madura was made a vicariate Apostolic under Mgr. Alexis Canoz, a year after the Hindo-European college was established at Negapatam.

Madura has another great achievement to its credit. The English government had put an end to the suttee: the frightful and compulsory custom of widows flinging themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands who were being incinerated. The prohibition was universally applauded but the Fathers started another movement. It was against the enforced celibacy of widows, some of whom had been married in babyhood, often to some old man, and were consequently obliged to live a single life after his death. The moral results of such a custom may be imagined. It was difficult at first to convince a convert that it was a perfectly proper thing for him to marry a widow, but little by little the prejudice was removed. Of course there are orphanages, old people's homes, Magdalen asylums, maternity hospitals, industrial schools, and other charitable institutions in prosperous Madura.

The work among the lower classes in the country districts is of the most trying description. There is no place for the itinerant missionary to find shelter in the villages except in some miserable hut. Indeed, 1,853 of these hamlets out of 2,035 have no accommodations at all for the priest, who perhaps has travelled for days through forests to visit them. Moreover, though the people have their good qualities and a great leaning to religion, they are fickle, excitable, ungrateful, unmindful as children at times, and hard to manage. In certain quarters, especially in the south, conversions are multiplying daily. The movement began as early as 1876, after a frightful famine that swept the country, and in one place the Christian population grew in fifteen years from 4,800 to 68,000. In 1889 around Tuticorin whole villages came over in a body. In December, 1891, 600 people were clamoring for baptism in one place, and they represented a dozen different castes. In 1891 one missionary was compelled to erect thirty-two new chapels. "I said we have 75 new villages;" writes another, "if we had priests enough we could have 75 more."

In 1920, there were in the Diocese of Trichinopoly besides the bishop, Mgr. Augustine Faisandier, 119 Jesuit priests of whom 28 are natives. There are a number of native scholastics. Besides this group there are 27 natives studying philosophy and theology in the seminary at Kandy. Add to this 32 Brothers of the Sacred Heart, an institute of Indian lay religious, who assist the missionaries as catechists and school teachers; 75 nuns in European and 346 in Indian institutions; and 75 oblates or pious women who devote themselves to the baptizing of heathen children; and you have some of the working corps in this prosperous mission. The Catholic population was 267,772 in 1916. There are 1,100 churches and chapels, 2,620 posts, a school attendance of 27,378 children, and 7 Catholic periodicals.

The missions in Mohammedan countries were particularly difficult to handle, because Turkey is a veritable Babel of races, languages and religions. There are Turks, and Syrians, and Egyptians and Arabians, along with the Metualis of Mount Lebanon and the Bedouins of the desert. There are Druses, who have a slender link holding them to Islamism; there are idolaters of every stripe; there are Schismatical Greeks, who call themselves Orthodox and depend on Constantinople; and there are United Greeks or Melchites who submit to Rome; Monophysite Armenians, and Armenian Catholics; and Copts also of the same divided allegiance. Then come Syrian Jacobites and United Syrians, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Maronites, Latins, Russians, with English, German and American Protestants, and to end all, the ubiquitous Jews. The missionaries who labor in this chaos are also of every race and wear every kind of religious garb. What will be the result of the changes consequent upon the World War no one can foretell. There is nothing to hope for from the Jews or Mohammedans; and only a very slight possibility of uniting the schismatics to Rome, or of converting the Protestants who have nothing to build on but sentiment and ingrained and inveterate prejudice. There is plenty to do, however, in restraining Catholics from rationalism and heresy; in lifting up the clergy to their proper level, by imparting to them science and piety; forming priests and bishops for the Uniates; promoting a love for the Chair of Peter; and all the while not only not hurting Uniate susceptibilities, but showing the greatest respect for the jealous autonomy of each Oriental Church.

Before the Suppression, the missions of the Levant were largely entrusted to the Jesuits of the province of Lyons. The alliance of the Grand Turk with the kings of France assured the safety of the missionaries and hence there were stations not only at Constantinople, but in Roumelia, Anatolia, Armenia, Mingrelia, Crimea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and in the Islands of the Ægean Sea. The work of predilection in all these places was toiling in the galleys with the convicts, or in the lazar houses with the plague-stricken. Between 1587 and 1773, more than 100 Jesuit missionaries died of the pest. In 1816, that is two years after the re-establishment of the Society, the bishops of the Levant petitioned Rome to send back the Jesuits. Thanks to Paul of Russia, they had resumed their old posts in 1805 in the Ægean, where one of the former Jesuits, named Mortellaro, had remained as a secular priest, and lived long enough to have one of the Fathers from Russia receive his last sigh and hear him renew his religious vows. This was the beginning of the present Sicilian Jesuit missions in the Archipelago. The Galician province has four stations in Moravia, and the Venetian has posts in Albania and Dalmatia.

In 1831 Gregory XVI ordered the Society to undertake the missions of Syria; but at that time Mehemet Ali of Egypt was at war with the Sultan, and the Druses and Maronites were butchering each other at will. Finally, in the name of the Sultan, Emir Haidar invited the Fathers to begin a mission at Bekfaya on the west slope of Mount Lebanon and about 10 miles west of Beirut. Simultaneously Emir Beckir, who was an upholder of Egypt, established them at Muallakah, a suburb of Zahlé on the other side of the mountain. At Hauran, on the borders of the desert, they found a Christian population in the midst of Druses and Bedouins. They were despised, ill-treated and virtually enslaved. They had no churches and no priests, were in absolute ignorance of their duties as Christians, and were stupefied to find that Rome had come so far to seek them. The work of lifting them up was hard enough, but it was a trying task to be commissioned by Rome to settle the disputes that were continually arising between Christian, Orthodox, and Turk, and even between ecclesiastical authorities. Father Planchet was the chief pacificator in all these wrangles, and for his punishment was made delegate Apostolic in 1850, consecrated Bishop of Mossul in 1853, and murdered in 1859 when about to set out for Rome.

Father Planchet was a Frenchman; with Father Riccadonna, an Italian, and Brother Henze, a Hanoverian, he went to Syria in 1831, at the joint request of the Melchite bishop, Muzloum, Joseph Assemani, the procurator of the Maronite patriarch and the Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo, Germanus Harva. A hitherto unpublished document recently edited by Father Jullien in "La Nouvelle Mission en Syrie" gives a detailed account of the journey of this illustrious trio from Leghorn to Syria.

"The vessel was called 'The Will of God,' and the voyage was," says Riccadonna, "an uninterrupted series of misfortunes, – fevers, faintings, rotten water, broken rigging, shattered masts, wild seas, frightful tempests, a sea-sick crew and escapes from English, Turkish and other cruisers on the high seas. When they came ashore the cholera was raging throughout the country." The narrative is full of interest with its picturesque descriptions of the people, their habitations, their festivals, their caravans, their filth, their fanaticism and the continually recurring massacres of Christians. The travellers journeyed to Beirut and Qamar and Bagdad and Damascus, and give vivid pictures of the conditions that met them in those early days. The medical ability of the lay-brother was of great service. He was the only physician in the country, with the result that, according to Riccadonna, each stopping place was a probatica piscina, every one striving to reach him first. "In Arabia," says the Relation, "as in the plains of Ba'albek, there is nothing but ignorance and sin. There are sorcerers and sorceresses in every village; superstitions of every kind, lies, blasphemies, perjury and impurity prevail. It is a common thing for Christians to bear Mussulman names and to pray to Mahomet. They never fast, and on feast days never go to Mass. Of spiritual books or the sacraments they know nothing; clan and personal vengeance and murder are common, and sexual immorality indescribable." Such was the state of these countries in 1831.

In 1843 the mission, which until then depended on the general, was handed to the province of Lyons. In that year a seminary for native priests was begun at Ghazir, in an old abandoned castle bought from an emir of the mountains. It began with two students, but at the end of the year there were twenty-five on the benches, and in that small number, many Rites were represented. A college for boys soon grew up around it, and a religious community of native nuns for the education of children was established. The latest account credits the Sisters with nearly 4,000 pupils.

New posts were established at Zahlé and ancient Sidon and also at Deir el Qamar. The prospects seemed fair for the moment, for had not the French and Turks been companions in arms in the Crimea? But in 1860 the terrible massacres in Syria began as a protest of the ultra-Mussulmans against the liberal concession of Constantinople to the Christians. In the long list of victims the Jesuits counted for something; for on June 18, four of them were butchered at Zahlé and a fifth at Deir el Qamar. In that slaughter eight thousand Christians were killed; 560 churches destroyed; three hundred and sixty villages devastated and forty-two convents burned. Three months later the Turkish troops from the garrison at Damascus butchered eight thousand five hundred people, four prelates, fifty Syrian priests, and all the Franciscan Friars in the city. They levelled to the ground three thousand eight hundred houses and two churches, and would have done more; but the slaughter was stopped when the Algerian Abd-el-Kader arrived on the scene. They still live on a volcano. Preceding and during the war of 1914, massacre of the Christians continued as usual.

Armenia is the Ararat of Scripture. Little Armenia, in which the Jesuits are laboring, is an irregular strip of territory that starts from the Gulf of Alexandretta and continues on towards the Black Sea. Its principal towns are Adana, Cæsarea, Civas, Tokat, Amasia, and Marswan, about two or three days' journey from each other. The country is mountainous, without railroads or other means of transport. The highways are infested with brigands; and the climate is excessively hot and excessively cold. The difficulties with which the Church has to contend in this inhospitable region are first, the government which is Turkish; second, the secret societies which are continually plotting against their Turkish masters; and third, the American Protestant sects which are covering the country with churches, orphan asylums, schools and dispensaries, and flooding it with anti-Catholic literature, and money. In 1886 all the schools were closed by the Turks, but when the French protested they were reopened. In 1894 two of the priests died while caring for the cholera victims and that helped to spread the Faith, for, of course, there are never any parsons on the scene in such calamities. Under Turkish rule also, massacres are naturally chronic, but Brou informs us that on such occasions the Protestants suffer more than the Catholics; for the latter are not suspected of being in the secret revolutionary societies, while the others are known to be deeply involved.

The population of this region consists of 500,00 °Christians, of whom 14,000 are Protestants and 12,00 °Catholics. The rest are Monophysite schismatics. In the mission besides the secular priests there are 57 Jesuits and 50 teaching sisters from France. There are 22 schools with 3,309 pupils, but only 504 of these children are Uniate Catholics. They are what are called Gregorians, for the tradition is that Armenia was converted to the Faith by St. Gregory the Illuminator. There are few conversions, but the schismatics accept whatever Catholic truth is imparted to them. They believe in the Immaculate Conception; pray for the dead; love the Pope; say their beads; and invoke the Sacred Heart. For them the difference between Romans and Gregorians is merely a matter of ritual. In several places, however, whole villages have asked to be received into Roman unity. As a people they look mainly to Russia for deliverance from the Turk, but neither Turk nor Russian now counts in the world's politics and no one can foresee the future.

Father Roothaan had long been dreaming of sending missionaries to what until very recently has been called the Unknown or Dark Continent, Africa. Hence when the authorities of the Propaganda spoke to him of a proposition, made by an ecclesiastic of admitted probity, about establishing a mission there, Roothaan accepted it immediately, and in the year 1846 ordered Father Maximilian Ryllo with three companions to ascend the Nile as far as possible and report on the conditions of the country. Ryllo was born in Russia in 1802 and entered the Roman province in 1820. After many years of missionary work in Syria, Malta and Sicily he was made rector of the Urban College in Rome on July 4, 1844, and was occupying that post when he was sent by Father Roothaan to the new mission of Central Africa.

In 1845 Ryllo was at Alexandria in search of "the eminent personage" who had suggested the mission and had been consecrated bishop in partibus, for the purpose of advancing the enterprise. But the "eminent personage" was not to be found either there or in Cairo. Hence after waiting in vain for a month, Ryllo and his companions started for Khartoum which was to be the central point for future explorations. After a little rest, they made their way up the White Nile. They were then under the equator, and had scant provisions for the journey, and no means of protection from the terrible heat, and, besides, they were in constant peril of the crocodiles which infested the shores of the river. The first negro tribes they met spoke an Arabic dialect, so it was easy to understand them. The native houses were caves in the hillsides, a style of dwelling that was a necessity on account of the burning heat. Their manner of life was patriarchal; they were liberal and kind, and seemed to be available foundation stones for the future Church which the missionaries hoped to build there. Satisfied with what they had discovered, they returned to Khartoum, but when they reported in due time to Propaganda, the mission was not entrusted to them. It was handed over to the Congregation of the Missionaries of Verona.