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Soon the Catholic Church was in trouble, and in 1534, Pope Paul III instructed a Spanish
priest, Ignatius de Loyola, to organize the ‘Order of the Jesuits’ (also known as the ‘Society of
Jesus’) in order to oppose the Protestant movement. Loyola, as a soldier, had been maimed in
battle, and while recuperating, claimed a conversion to Catholicism. He wrote a guidebook called
Spiritual Exercises to help people get spiritually closer to Christ. On August 15, 1534, in Paris,
Loyola and six other men, joined together in taking vows of poverty and chastity, and to accept
any assignment requested by the Pope. The group was officially sanctioned by the Pope in 1540.
The head of the Jesuits became known as the ‘Black Pope.’
Those taking the Jesuit Oath swore allegiance to “his holiness, the Pope, (who) is Christ’s
Vice-Regent, and is the true and only head of the Catholic or Universal Church throughout the
Earth.” The oath contained a pledge to “make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly,
against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do to extirpate and exterminate
them from the face of the whole earth, and that I will spare neither sex, age, nor condition, and
that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the
stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants’ heads against the wall, in order to
annihilate forever their excrable.”
While the Dominicans worked publicly, the Jesuits worked secretly. They had planned the
massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572 that killed 70,000 Huguenots (French Protestants, who
later established the Reformed Church of France). Carried out by Dominican monks and Roman
Catholic troops, most of the French Christian leaders were killed, which practically stopped the
Christian movement in France. To celebrate, the Pope ordered the Rosary said in every church to
thank the Virgin Mary for victory, and had a medal struck to commemorate the occasion.
In England, Jesuit priests translated Origen’s Alexandrian manuscripts into English in 1582,
but the new Bible was rejected. Some researchers feel that this was the real reason behind the
attack of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Spain’s mighty fleet was defeated. The Jesuit movement
grew, and by 1626, there were 15,000 members; and by 1749, over 22,000. It became the largest
single Roman Catholic Order.
On June, 1773, Pope Clement XIV (1769-75), pressured by France, Spain, and Portugal, said
that the group was “immoral and a menace to the Church and the Faith,” and abolished the
Order. In Germany, the government established a Commission to liquidate and inventory Jesuit
assets. Councilor Zuytgens was appointed to inventory all articles at their college in Ruremonde,
and to forward all documents to the government. He discovered the Secreta Monita, which was
recorded in the “Protocol of the Transactions of the Committee Appointed in Consequence of the
Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the Low Countries” which is on file in the archives in
Brussels. The book contained secret instructions for the Jesuits, and its leaders, and warned
against its discovery, because of people getting the wrong idea about the Order.
The Jesuits continued to operate secretly, establishing their headquarters in Russia. It is
believed that they survived by joining Masonic lodges. Napoleon had Pope Pius VII (1800-23)
jailed at Avignon until he agreed to reinstate the Jesuits, and at the Congress of Vienna (1814-
15) the demand for their services, allegedly to “make America Catholic,” led Pope Pius VII to
reestablish the Order.
In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) said: “We declare, affirm, and define as a truth
necessary for salvation that every human being is subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
Pope Leo X (1513-21) proclaimed that all human beings must be subject to the Roman
Pontiff for salvation. He said: “It has served us well, this myth of Christ.” He sold indulgences
and ordered that heretics be burned.