Outspoken priest raises concerns over predator priests in the Society of Jesus
A senior Jesuit has written an apocalyptic letter warning his confreres across the world that the Society of Jesus is doomed if it does not repent and regain its original vision.
In his 11-page epistle titled Ad Usum Nostrorum (For Our Use), Fr. Julio Fernández Techera, rector of the Catholic University of Uruguay, raises the alarm that the society is in “deep decline” and “does not have a real vision of where it is going and what it wants to achieve.”
The letter begins by asking why the sex abuse scandals of the celebrity Jesuit mosaic artist Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik that rocked the Society of Jesus in 2022 have not been addressed in the Congregation of Procurators and are not stated clearly in the De Statu Societatis 2023.
Fernández expresses grave concern that multiple members within the Jesuit community at the Aletti Center in Rome, co-founded by Rupnik, have left the Jesuit order as an expression of solidarity with the predator priest, who is accused of sexually abusing 25 nuns.
After highlighting the “Rupnik Tsunami,” Fernández addresses the cover-up by several Jesuit provincials in the case of Fr. Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno, a Bolivian Jesuit, who abused over 85 males, including several Jesuit seminarians, in the 1980s.
“We have had to find out about everything through the press and we have not received a single statement or letter from the General Curia explaining what happened or to ask for prayers for the province of Bolivia,” Fernández laments.
The annual report of the order “says nothing about the issue of concealment and the responsibilities of superiors” even though “the reputation of the Society of Jesus has been hit hard in recent times,” the rector notes.
Slamming the De Statu Societatis 2023 for its “convoluted” language, the rector asks why it does not discuss topics linked to “the redemptive mission of Christ and our priestly task.”
“We cannot contemplate the world as atheists,” Fernández admonishes, noting that the Jesuits are experiencing a “tremendous identity crisis” and are guilty of “secularizing” the vocation of the priesthood and the Society of Jesus.
“It seems that they (the Superior General and his team) do not want to talk about the priestly identity of our vocation,” he writes. “The implicit concealment of the priesthood as an essential characteristic of our vocation, I believe, is the key to our lack of vocations.”
“In this entire long document, of more than 24,000 words, the word ‘priest’ never appears and ‘priesthood’ appears only twice, although to make a reference distinguishing between the priesthood in the society and the diocesan priesthood,” he observes.
“If what the document indicates is like this, the Society’s problem is more serious than we might think. If Jesuits of all generations and all cultural backgrounds have doubts about their identity, we are finished,” he predicts.
“I think our attitude is suicidal: we want vocations for the priesthood in the Society, but we don’t want to talk about being priests,” the rector warns, outlining the nosedive in the number of vocations.
“In 2023, 314 novices joined the entire Company, and 319 Jesuits died,” he details, explaining how the society lost 245 members last year. “In my own province from 2011 to 2024, 44 novices have entered. In the same period, 46 Jesuits have left the society.”
“Recently, a companion told me that 72 novices entered his province in the last ten years. In the same period, 71 Jesuits left the society in the same province,” he adds. “The problem is not only that many die and few enter, but also that we do not know how to retain many of those who enter.”
Fernández blasts the Jesuits in many parts of the world for turning into “shameful, secretive, timid priests, without apostolic zeal,” warning that the vision of the order as laid out in the annual report is no different from that of a “secular think-tank, left-wing political party, or progressive non-governmental organization.”
Jesuits are obsessed with migrants, globalization, climate change, inequality, wars, racism, human and organ trafficking, drug smuggling, and the arms trade, as seen in the annual report, he points out.
However, Jesuit barely mention topics like abortion, euthanasia, the de-Christianization of the West, persecution of Christians, the destruction of the family, gender ideology and woke culture, moral relativism, transhumanism, the tyranny of globalist bodies, the lack of meaning in millions of youth, and the increasing suicide rate among both young and old, he laments.
Fernández concludes by reiterating the numerical decline in the society, noting that “in a few years the society will have disappeared from several European countries and will become insignificant in others in Europe, America and Oceania.”
“We have lost 61% of the members we had in 1965. Of the 39% that remain, a high percentage are elderly,” he writes. “We are now 13,995 Jesuits. For the third year I confirm that the only attendance that is growing is from Africa. All others, including Asian ones, are declining.”
In the early 1980s, Pope John Paul II intervened in the governance of the society, removing the Marxist Fr. Pedro Arrupe from his position as superior general.
In an article piece published March 2022, the late Cardinal George Pell, under the pseudonym Demos, urged the Holy See to conduct an investigation into the Society of Jesus.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.