Churches

Communities on the way

In 1568 the first church dedicated to the “name of Jesus” was built in Rome. Today there are 21 communities entrusted to the Society, from Trieste to Catania, including Tirana. We are among the people, next to each one, to promote reconciliation and justice.

Art and spirituality

In 1568 the Jesuits built their first church in the center of Rome and dedicated it to the “Name of Jesus”. It was imitated, for centuries, in countless churches that the Jesuits built throughout the world, becoming a model of Jesuit architecture.

Among the key features of our churches:

the central location in the city, reflecting Ignatius’ intuition to seek God in the heart of the human experience;
the plan as a “classroom”, to facilitate the proclamation of the Word;
the “trigram” IHS, an abbreviation of the Name of Jesus, that emphasizes the personal relationship with Christ;
the importance of the Eucharist (in the context of the Catholic Reformation);
the presence, on the sides or in the transepts, of the two main saints of the Society as symbols of the institution’s centrality (St. Ignatius) and of the passion that leads to the last frontiers (St. Francis Xavier),
the baroque style (as art that gets the “5 senses” involved in the experience of the encounter with God).