EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

Jesuits as a body. In 1750, the year before the first Acts of Suppression,
there were about 23,000 Jesuits spread through Europe, East
Asia, Latin America and Africa. Some 700 colleges and 300 mission
stations were active.
Dismissal from the Portuguese and Spanish dominions occasioned
great hardship. Some Jesuits arriving in Portugal after expulsion
from the colonies were thrown into gaol and remained there for 17
years. Joseph Pignatelli was among several thousand Jesuits dumped
in camps in the Papal States. It is not difficult to imagine the
distress of elderly priests and brothers sent into exile, and then to
a foreign land, with their identity, their name as Jesuits, removed.
Many, before being unloaded on alien shores, spent time as boat
people, passed from port to port because the French, Genoese and
other governments were unwilling to accept them, fearing political
repercussions.
The Jesuit presence in Australia has explicit refugee origins. In
1848, the year of revolutions, the Emperor Leopold was persuaded
by the Liberals to expel the Society of Jesus from his Austro-Hungarian
realm. The Society, re-established scarcely 30 years earlier
following its Suppression, was just finding its feet again. Some
Austrian Jesuits took refuge in one of the few European countries
who would receive them; others went to the United States. Two,
Aloysius Kranewitter and Maximilian Klinkowstroem set out for
Australia as refugees, and as chaplains to refugees. The party from
Silesia included 150 farmers and craftsmen and their families. They
were Catholics experiencing persecution due to a rise of Lutheran
fervour. Kranewitter was ordained only six weeks before their departure.
Their ship arrived to a hot dry summer in Port Adelaide,
Port Misery, a colony founded only 12 years before. Klinkowstroem
fell ill and returned to Europe. No suitable place to settle was
evident and internal dissension broke the group apart. Kranewitter
found himself in an English-speaking colony in the antipodes, wondering
where to begin. In time he did great things, but his Australian
beginning was a bitter refugee experience.
Criteria and priorities of JRS
The JRS deserves the name Ignatian because, as Arrupe remarked,
it is the sort of thing Ignatius would have done. In fact, it is what
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