Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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Verbiest took SchalVs place on the board of mathematics and so awed the Orientals by his work in astronomy and physics that he was raised to the highest grade among the Mandarins. But let us leave the missionary fields of the other hemisphere for those of our own western world. A -X. merica has known the Jesuits since it knew the white man. We ' ll have to omit Paraguay, South America entirely and come Among the earliest set- tlers in South America, in Mexico, in Canada, in New York, in Mary- land, in the Mississippi Valley, in California, were Jesuits. north rapidly. The University of Mexico was founded in 157 3. Twentieth- century Jesuits had better omit clerical dress when visiting it. Father Miguel Pro was shot for Christ in Mexico City a few years ago. We all remember Father Heredia and his expose of Spiritism as a fraud. Our Father Jogues martyred in New York Student editor remembers well that well rounded, that “whole” man indeed of the Jesuits, Father Jaime Castiello. But in the north—Saint Isaac Jogues and his com- panions martyred by the Iroquois in New York State and Canada, those letters and reports called “Jesuit Relations,” later the brief Jesuit school at the Battery in 1682, Father Kino in California, Father Font on the site of San Francisco, in the Missis- sippi Valley Marquette and many another, in Maryland Father Andrew White erecting the cross and celebrating Mass for the first settlers in this wilderness, the Jes- uits have strong roots in the soil of America. There is a bank of the Susquehanna that is Catholic today because our Maryland fathers travelled it. There is a permanent quality about work like that. There is a record of a sick call at Conewaga, the Pastor told us. 28

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Vilela, the first Jesuit to reach the Mikado, Almeida and Alexander Valignani, carried on Xavier ' s mission in Nippon. Although constantly harried by the Jap- anese bonzes, or priests, hundreds of thousands became Christians, including several kings and their families. Valignani’ s death saw Japan with 150 Jesuits, numerous colleges, schools, hospitals and countless churches and converts. The boss men of Japan put an end to their work in the late 16th Century. Persecution found them strong and over 200,000 were martyred, including 80 Jesuits. Every one knows the story of the Christians who kept the faith, by family tradition through the centuries up to Admiral Perry. India was the scene of a curious phenomenon. There such noted scholars as de Nobili, and Constant Beschi, sought the confidence of the Indians by adopting the manner, dress and culture of high class Brahmins, and likewise of the lower castes. It wasn’t an infrequent sight to see a Jesuit splendiferously arrayed, in a palan- quin, meeting another Jesuit in the rags of a pariah, each forbidden by the strict rules of caste to recognize the other. Such men as Ruggieri, tered China about 1581 as ticians. Ricci was proba- travel through the interior celebrated to the present Adam Schall penetrated to after securing permission uits to preach anywhere Pasio and Matteo Ricci en- scientists and mathema- bly the first white man to of China and his maps are day for their accuracy, the capital at Pekin and of the Emperor for the Jes- in the empire, was ap- pointed chief of the board Peter Clavcrbapizing the Negroes of mathematics. Father de Nobili as a Brahmin 27

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The execution of Fr. Miguel Pro, Mexico, igzj whereon the father rode up as far as ‘‘York State.” Today in the United States the Society conducts 34 high schools with 16,000 stu- dents and 24 colleges and universities with an aggregate enrollment of 45,000. The American Jesuit colleges were pioneers in seismography. In a prolonged rearguard engagement they retained the classical languages as required courses long after American education had discarded them. From Maine to Florida, America, particu- larly in small towns and villages, possesses a plenty of Mac ' s and O ' s whose forbears gradually forgot the faith due to the scarcity of priests. But American Catholicism today has the power of self-expression largely due to the fathers who, without money or numbers, threw up ambitious colleges and huge churches throughout the 19th Century. The romantic adventure of the faith was not confined to colonial times. 29