Towards Loyola 2022 | DAY 1 CONGRESS EDITION

Loyola 2022 Congress | 28 March 2022

In Loyola! Yes, we are here, we have been arriving in the last couple of days, 160 different people, coming from many places and numerous Jesuit works. Loyola is not, for us, specially this year, a place just like any other, though. Looking around, we cannot avoid evoking what happened to Ignatius right here during his convalescence. Fr. General, as he offered some lines of encouragement for our work, told us this afternoon: “You are now in Loyola”. Wait! This may be more than a statement of the obvious. We may hear it as an invitation to understand being in Loyola as a call for disposing us to go through the same experience Ignatius had here 500 years ago – to be touched and moved by the Spirit and set in a new path of service.

The wounded Ignatius was brought to Loyola to recover his health, bringing with him old projects and dreams. Here, he was surprised by God, he was challenged, and he let himself be deeply transformed. A few months later, he resumed his life journey with different goals and practising a different of way of living. Being in Loyola, for Ignatius, meant conversion.

We hope that the gathering in Loyola, this week, may become a deep and fruitful experience of being also in Loyola. You all who follow it from afar, journey with us. Even if you are not in Loyola, put yourself in Loyola.

Franck Janin SJ, President of the Jesuit Conference of European Provincials, Katrin Morales, Managing Director of Jesuit Missions Austria and Peter Rožič SJ, Director of the Jesuit European Social Centre (JESC) at the Opening Ceremony of the Loyola 2022 Justice and Ecology Congress.

Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus left a message to the participants of the Loyola 2022 Congress, together with words of encouragement as a way to strength the Jesuit mission and seek better ways to implement the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs). The video was then followed by a live interaction with Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ, where he answered to the questions of the participants.

Jose Ignacio SJ, Director of the Centre Cristianisme i Justicia, joined as a keynote speaker to the lecture "Extending the Social Apostolate (SA) for a new decade" to discuss the Social Apostolate in Europe. García discussed factors external to the Society that might be weakening the SA, stressing the urgency of gaining new meaning in light of the needs and aspirations of the society as a way to overcome new challenges.

"Apostolic Preferences are the Society dreaming for the next 10 years", said John Dardis SJ, General Counsellor for Discernment and Apostolic Planning in the General Curia of the Society of Jesus, in his keynote adress. Dardis presented each UAPs as a way to deepen our conversion. The adress ended with the question (that we now invite you to answer): "What preference touches you most/has most resonance in your Province or Region?"

The second and last lecture of the day "Spirituality; personal, communal and ecological conversion" came with the keynote adress of Celia Deane-Drummond, Director of the Laudato Si' Research Institute, Katrine Camilleri, Director of the JRS Malta and Austen Ivereigh, writer, journalist and teacher from Campion Hall. Celia Deane-Drummond explained Pope Francis' steps in Ecological Conversion and the Ecological Meaning of Vocation.

Katrine Camilleri shared her experience at JRS working with refugees, remembering Pope Francis' quote on solidarity: "The place where we start to learn that we are responsible for the fragility of others as we strive to build a common future". The day ended with the intervention of Austen Ivereigh on Pope Francis’s discernment on the post-pandemic world, in the light of the two encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, and his book Let Us Dream. The intervention ended with the following reflection: "The opportunity of this time is to transform our Church, our modus operandi, vivendi et cogitandi, to offer a Samaritan Church that models the sign of the neighbour to the prodigal Son who has seen and experienced the technocratic paradigm at first hand, and dares to hope of an alternative."

Do you know that we have a graphic illustrator drawing the highlights of the #Loyola2022Congress every day? Marta Romay works at Fundació Migra Studium from Servicio Jesuita a Migrantes (SJM). Here is the drawing for the first day of the Congress. We continue on our way to strengthen our Apostolic body.