Francis’ Admits “Life Full Of Contradictions”
Speaking to the Greek Jesuits on December 4 (Transcript: LaCiviltaCattolica.com, December 16), he remembers a particularly good, intelligent and likeable student but the brothers said, “Be careful, send him to work a little before ordination.” According to Francis, they “saw under the water.”
Following his usual black-and-white scheme, Francis said that priests are “sometimes abstract” while brothers are practical and understand conflicts and difficulties well.
On the Jesuits’ General Pedro Arrupe (1907-1991), who led the Society of Jesus in a state of unprecedented decadence, Francis said that he “renewed the spirituality of the Society and let it grow.”
Some phrases later, Francis admitted that when he entered the novitiate, there were 33,000 Jesuits and now more or less half, “And we will continue to diminish in number.”
Francis cuts short that "if the vocations do not come, it does not depend on us” - as if Jesuits' house-made decadence had no effect on the vocations.
Speaking about “the end of a Jesuit’s life,” Francis said for him, old age menas, “full of work, perhaps tired, full of contradictions, but with a smile, with the joy of having done one’s work.”
For Francis, an old Jesuit who continues to work and “to suffer the contradictions” but doesn’t lose his smile is a "song to hope."
He recalls a sentimental movie he liked as a boy: The Soldier’s Return. A soldier came home tired, wounded, but with a smile at being home and having done his duty.
Finally, Francis defines the logic of the Kingdom of God as “the logic of contradiction" - while in reality, this is the definition of the Kingdom of the Devil.
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