Are Jesuits graduates?
The stages of the religious path within the Society of Jesus include the study of theology and philosophy, with the attainment of the Licentiate, the Bachelor’s degree but also Masters and Doctorates.
Many think that Jesuits are therefore all graduates and all in theological subjects or related to the Holy Scriptures, but this is not always the case.
Today, the average age of entry into the novitiate is higher than in the past, it is no longer possible to admit 14, 15 or 16 year olds, novices can also be over 30 years old, so candidates often already have a previous degree.
Doctors, engineers, law and business graduates or not necessarily university graduates: there are many different educational backgrounds for each novice and member of the Company.
Here too, it is often assumed that they are alumni of the Society’s schools or young graduates of the Pontifical Gregorian University.
In reality, there are many aspiring Jesuits who have known the Society of Jesus away from the benches of their public school or university.
This ‘prejudice’ of the Jesuit necessarily having a university degree is even more entrenched for the past centuries of the Society, but a check in the archives may reveal surprises.
Personal files in fact preserve the official documentation and often the titles obtained prior to entry into the Company. Titles and studies are also mentioned by individual aspirants at the time of entry into the novitiate where candidates wrote about themselves in a register, which can be consulted today.
The first piece of information to be gleaned concerns the brothers, a very important figure in the Society of Jesus: the closest to daily service, indispensable gardeners, cooks, mechanics, electricians, tailors and botanists. Most of them already had their own personal and experiential background in a specific trade when they entered the novitiate.
This expertise was highly valued and indispensable because the Jesuit brother, after the two years of novitiate was immediately sent to his first community, a service that often lasted half a century between boarding schools and retreat houses. While learning a lot in the novitiate, the practical specialisation favoured his future assignment especially for those with specific skills such as blacksmiths, carpenters, electricians and mechanics.
These skills were even more valuable for those brothers destined for the poorest missions.
The aspiring ‘fathers’, on the other hand, could be university graduates or not, but few were already accustomed to theological studies or had left the seminaries.
P. Giuseppe Carones, for example, was a young engineer when he entered the novitiate; the two university transcripts you see in the photograph belong to him, with all the exams he took at the Milan Polytechnic. A very different formation from that of the seminary, in fact, Fr. Carones entered the Society of Jesus after attending a course of spiritual exercises, then following the normal course of studies envisaged by the Society. Before entering the Order, Fr Colombo Raineri had instead enrolled at the Catholic University of Milan, in the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy. In contrast, Fr. Andre Gianni had obtained a degree in natural sciences from the University of Padua in 1905.
Many Jesuits also obtain degrees in mathematics, or astronomy, or physics during their formation, depending on their interests and the apostolate to which they are called or feel most inclined.
