jesuits

"In 1838, a group of America's most prominent Catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their mission, the fledgling Georgetown University. Journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns has broken new ground with her prodigious research into a history that the Catholic Church has edited out of its own narrative. Beginning in the present, when two descendants of a family enslaved by the church reconnect, Swarns follows their ancestors through the centuries to understand how slavery enabled the Catholic Church to establish a foothold in America and fuel its expansion. Ann Joice, a free Black woman and progenitor of the Mahoney family, sailed to Maryland in the 1600s as an indentured servant, but her contract was burned and her freedom stolen. Harry Mahoney, Ann's grandson, saved lives and a Church fortune with his quick thinking during the British incursions in the War of 1812. But when the Jesuits fell into debt and were at risk of losing Georgetown University, they sold 272 people, including Harry's daughter Anna, to plantation owners in the Gulf. Like so many of the families the Jesuits' sale tore apart, Anna would never again see her father or her beloved sister Louisa who stayed with Harry in Maryland. Her descendants would work for the Jesuits well into the 20th century. The two sides of the family would remain apart until Swarns' original reporting on the 1838 sale in the New York Times reunited them and led directly to reparations for all the descendants of the enslaved"--Provided by publisher.

Father James Martin offers spiritual advice to Jesuits based on the life and teachings of Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus.

"The daughter of an Algonquin mother and an Iroquois father, Catherine/Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) has become known over the centuries as a Catholic convert so holy that, almost immediately upon her death, she became the object of a cult. Today she is revered as a patron saint by Native Americans and the patroness of ecology and the environment by Catholics more generally, the first Native North American proposed for sainthood." "Tekakwitha was born at a time of cataclysmic change, as Native Americans of the northeast experienced the effects of European contact and colonization. A convert to Catholicism in the 1670s, she embarked on a physically and mentally grueling program of self-denial, aiming to capture the spiritual power of the newcomers from across the sea. Her story intersects with that of Claude Chauchetiere, a French Jesuit of mystical tendencies who came to America hoping to rescue savages from sin and paganism. But it was Claude himself who needed help to face down his own despair. He became convinced that Tekakwitha was a genuine saint and that conviction gave meaning to his life. Though she lived until just 24, Tekakwitha's severe penances and vivid visions were so pronounced that Chauchetiere wrote an elegiac hagiography shortly after her death.".