Our bond with the Church

For the greater glory of God

We are people of the Church and for the Church. We make ourselves totally available to her to help in the fulfilment of her universal mission. We walk with her, offering our full collaboration. We constantly ask ourselves which of our spiritual charisms can be most beneficial for her in any given situation. It is a relationship of love that helps us “feel” her problems and her limitations, as if they were our own. In virtue of this bond, we seek to help her grow towards the greater glory of God.

Allegiance to the Pope

Some of us make a special vow of obedience to the Pope. It is the famous fourth vow: the obedience circa missiones. Since the Pope has a universal vision of the Church, he knows better than others which frontiers should we be sent to. Ignatius and his first companions founded the Society with the intention of putting themselves at the service of the Pope, placing themselves totally at his disposal to take on any mission asked of them.

At the frontiers

One of the characteristics particular to the Jesuit Order which we offer to the universal Church is to stay at the ‘frontiers’ of society, where new questions are asked, or where answers are hard to come by. The appeal addressed to us by Paul VI at General Congregation 32 (December 3, 1974) still rings loud and clear:

“Wherever in the Church, even in the most difficult and extreme fields, at the crossroads of ideologies, in the social trenches, wherever there has been and there is confrontation between the burning exigencies of man and the perennial message of the Gospel, here also there have been, and there are, Jesuits.”