Sunday, June 10, 2007

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski's Spooky Obscurity







Here’s an indisputably significant yet obscure historical figure:

Wlodimir (Vladimir) or (Włodzimierz) Ledochowski, 26
th Superior General of the Jesuit Order from 1915 to 1942.

According to Tupper Saussy, Ledochowski's obituary in The New York Times stated that Ledchowski did “many great and important things” which future historians would write about

According to his premature (reportedly erroneously reported) New York Times obituary of December 10, 1942:
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, who met Father Ledochowski in 1930, wrote later that "everyone in Rome I was told that Father Ledochowski would rank as one of the two or three greatest heads of the Jesuit Order," an estimate which would group him with such men as Ignatius Loyola, the first [Jesuit] general, Francisco Borgia, the third, and [Claudius] Aquaviva, the fifth.
Yet a man this influential, yet no books, no movies, no video. Nothing. Not even on many Roman Catholic sites, with his name curiously omitted from Jesuit sites.

Why might that be?

Wlodimir Ledochowski:
Continuing the Counter-Reformation into the 20th Century

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