If you drove by St. Peter’s Prep on Grand Street in Jersey City last Friday or St. Peter’s University on Montgomery Street, you wouldn’t have noticed anything changed or new, except the university is constructing a new dorm.
But something big-time did occur on the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits.
A new province was formed by combining the provinces of New York, New England and Maryland into what will be the East Province of the Jesuits in the U.S. and the largest of the five provinces in North America. It will cover 16 states, from Maine to Georgia, and the District of Columbia with 600 Jesuits and 11 universities and colleges including biggies like Georgetown, Fordham and B.C.
Twenty-six middle and high schools are covered, including Prep, the all-scholarship Regis – after which the late Regis Philbin was named after his dad’s alma mater – and Xavier in Manhattan.
The Jesuits of the new province also staff 17 parishes, six retreat houses -- including Loyola in Morristown -- and two international schools.
The Rev. Joseph M. O’Keefe became the new provincial the same day as the merger took place.
In the Jesuit magazine, aptly titled JESUITS, O’Keefe described his feelings as “both daunted and excited.”
He sees his mission to discern, he said, “how can we respond to the needs of the world and church?”
He called the new province an “efficient coming together as we muster resources” and said he expects to chart a course for the next decade.
For example, he acknowledged that there are fewer Jesuits than even 50 years ago when the New York Province (encompassing New York and New Jersey) alone had more than 1,000 Jesuits and was the largest in the world of over 36,000 Jesuits.
Today, 140 of the 600 in the new province are retired and the average age is 72. But, he said, the younger Jesuits are remaining.
O’Keefe knows that to continue all these institutions he relies on dedicated laypeople who have learned the Jesuit charism. At Prep, we learned it in freshman year when we wrote the acronym “A.M.D.G.” (“Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” – “for the greater glory of God”) on the top of all our papers.
Jesuits can be found in every profession.
Jesuit George Drance, for example, is artist-in-residence at Fordham’s Department of Theatre. He is also an accomplished director who has mounted plays at the famous La Mama Theatre on the Lower East Side.
“As a priest with a ministry to the artistic community, I see the new relationships between institutions in the various cities of the East Coast as offering greater possibilities for artistic collaboration and outreach,” Drance said.
Closer to home, the Rev. Rocco Danzi, just completing 10 years at SPU, moved from vice president for Mission and Ministry to become the pastor of St. Aedan’s Church, which is the university parish, run by the Jesuits. He started out as director of Campus Ministry for the university.
In his 31st year as a Jesuit, Danzi realized that his calling is to do ministry more than administration “and to be more with people” as opposed to approving budgets. He will be one of only 12 Jesuits in the one Jersey City Jesuit community at SPU whereas when I was in school there were over 50 Jesuits uptown and another 50 Downtown.
Today, there are now more lay presidents and principals of the various institutions. In the last year, the Jesuits pulled out of Wheeling College in West Virginia and one of the priests there, the Rev. Luis Tampe, moved to SPU.
Soon, O’Keefe and his consultors will discern how to reduce the number of retreat houses, where people can go for refreshment and renewal, from six to four. And he questions whether they can continue to staff so many parishes, which should be staffed by diocesan priests.
But he cautioned that there are extensive consultation protocols and every institutional change has to be approved by the Superior General in Rome. And Pope Francis is a Jesuit, who has declared an Ignatian Year beginning March 2021 to last until the feast of the canonizations of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier in 2022.
“It will be a year of spiritual renewal,” O’Keefe said.
In 1833, the Maryland Province covered the entire country at the time and as the Jesuit numbers grew, more provinces were carved out of it. This time they have reunited, though with many more institutions.
O’Keefe feels blessed that he can really drive to any of his institutions and the big cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C., where most are located. In the next six years he will rack up many miles of visitations.
He holds six degrees, including a master’s and a doctorate in education from Harvard. He has been on the faculty of Fordham’s Graduate School of Education.
“I am at heart a teacher, and good teachers listen as much as they speak,” he told JESUIT Magazine.
Many of those lessons will come in handy as provincial.
The Rev. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, NJ 07030. Email: padrealex@yahoo.com; Twitter: @padrehoboken.