The 8-day retreat ended yesterday and today we started the statutory sessions of the Congregation of Procurators. Our aim is to discern where the Holy Spirit is leading the Society and how to open ourselves to the way He shows us.

We started these sessions by singing the Veni Creator and then we were guided by Fr General himself, Arturo Sosa, and by the secretary of the Society, Antoine Kerhuel, through the character and the aim of a Congregation of Procurators.

This is not a General Congregation, which is the highest form of government in the Society and therefore, makes decisions, but a very broad form of consultation for Fr. General. The Congregation of Procurators has three main objectives: i) a deliberative vote on whether to convoke a General Congregation, ii) to deliberate on the state of the Society and iii) to deal with the topics proposed by Fr General. During these days we will deliberate on some themes to respond to the insistent call to personal, community and institutional conversion, we will propose modifications to the De Statu written by Fr General as a spiritual reading of all the Procurators’ reports, and we will suggest appropriate pedagogies to share the De Statu Societatis with the whole Society and our mission partners.

The themes chosen to be addressed during this Congregation are mainly three: i) the Universal Apostolic Preferences, their acceptance, assimilation and implementation; the resistances we feel still exist in the Society about assimilating them in our life-mission; ii) Jesuit Identity and Charism and the Apostolic Body which include all our partners in mission; iii) Examination of how the Society of Jesus is being governed. The method we are going to use is having 2 or 3 introductions to each theme by members of the Congregation, followed by personal prayer remaining attentive to the Lord’s action. After prayer we will meet in small groups followed by a plenary session.

This evening, we ended the day with mass at the Loyola Sanctuary, presided by Fr General. He emphasized that in this task, we are not alone; Jesus promised to be with us and to send the Spirit to guide us as well.

Please, keep all the Procurators and the whole Society in your prayers as we will start deliberating on the UAPs tomorrow, after electing a secretary for the Congregation.