Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Wlodimir Ledochowski's Afterglow 4 Peter Kolvenbach

29th Jesuit Superior General
Kolvenbach’s Continuing Counter Reformation from the Mid East
There seemed, indeed, during those years of Ledochowski, Pius XI, and Pius XII, no real limit to what both Jesuitism and overall Roman Catholicism could achieve. Even – especially, we should say – in the afterglow of Ledochowski’s long reign and into the Generalate of his successor, Belgian Jean-Baptise Janssens, the magic power of the momentum seemed to continue.
Peter Kolvenbach; born November 30, 1928

Succeeding the ‘leftist’ Arrupe nearly 2 years after his stroke, and 5 years into the Papacy of Karol Woytyla as JP2 was Peter Hans Kolvenbach, born November 30, 1928, who became the Jesuit Order Superior General September 13, 1983

That was the time that the eastern Mediterranean began getting hotter with high profile terrorist assaults, notably the simultaneous suicide truck bombings of the French and the US. Marine Corps barracks in Beruit that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French paratroopers and 6 Lebanese civilians on October 23, 1983- a mere 40 days after Kovenbach became Black Pope.


It was from this area where Kolvenbach was most active during the preceding years, serving as Professor of General Linguistics at the University of St Joseph in Beirut, Lebanon until 1981 when he became rector of the Pontificial Oriental Institute (for the study of eastern Mediterranean area Christianity), while serving as the Provincial Superior of the Jesuit vice province of the Middle East.

Kolvenbach continued as the Jesuit Order Superior General until his resignation at the Jesuit General Congregation, in January 2008 which elected his successor, Adolfo Nichols, whose area of expertise is the Far East.

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