Bombay: The Jesuit Fathers who run St. Xavier’s College here and 34 other institutions in Maharashtra, are among 29 colleges and 92 high schools in the country that celebrated the 500th anniversary of their founder, St. Ignatius Loyola, and the 450th anniversary of the founding of the Society, on April 20.
The Society of Jesus existed in India and in Bombay for over 400 years. The first Jesuit to come to India, Fr. Francis Xavier, SJ., left Lisbon on April 7, 1541 450 years ago). The Society of Jesus was founded Sept. 27, 1540. The group grew to over 36,000 at its peak in 1966. After that, because of the turmoil in the world of values in religion, there has been a sharp decrease in its numbers. By the end of 1972, Jesuits were a little over 30,000. Today the total number of Jesuits in the world is 24,421. India is the country with the second largest number of Jesuits (2,997), after the United States with 4,724. Spain comes third with 2,229. In India, the Jesuits run 28 colleges, 9 technical institutions and 92 high schools. Some of the better-known ones among these are Si. Xavier’s College, Bombay; Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), t Jamshedpur, St. Joseph’s College, Tiruchirappalli; 8 Loyola College, Madras; St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad, and St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta.
Today, the Jesuits feel that the problem of poverty and injustice is more important than running established educational institutions. There is a strong move to. shift from established institutional work to working with the poor and the marginalized. Concretely, this has meant giving up prestigious education institutions and other such works and moving Jesuit personnel to areas of work with the poor.
Thus, for instance, in Bombay, the Jesuits gave up the prestigious Campion High School in South Bombay which catered to the relatively richer section of society. At the same time, they opened 11 new middle and high schools in the rural areas around Thalasseri. (Times of India, April 17).
