History of The Eastern Africa Province

The history of the Society of Jesus in Eastern Africa dates back to the days of St. Ignatius, who himself wished to go and work in "The land of Prester John." When Francis Xavier set out in 1541, he stopped for sometime in Malindi in Kenya on his way to India. In 1553 St. Ignatius created the Province of Ethiopia, which he assigned 15 Jesuits; but this initiative ended in 1577, mainly because of the mission leader's lack of flexibility and consideration for venerable Ethiopian Christian traditions.

From 1603 to 1640, there was a second apostolic effort that started very well thanks to the prudence and tact of Fr. Pedro Paez, a Portuguese Jesuit, but this too, ended in disaster because of the rigidity and lack of judgment of Archbishop Mendez, another Jesuit.

In 1847 Fr. Massimiliano Ryllo, a Polish Jesuit, was sent to Sudan as a member of a mission team, became Vicar Apostolic of the Vicariate of Central Africa, but died soon after of a tropical disease soon after reaching Khartoum.

In 1945, a new chapter began in the history of the Eastern Africa. . . . Read the rest of the history     

 

Wherever in the Church, even in the most difficult and extreme fields,  in the crossroads of ideologies, in the front line of social conflict, there has been and there is confrontation between the deepest desires of the human person and the perennial message of the Gospel, there too, there have been, and there are, Jesuits.