Fr. Pabst is the founder and current president of two middle schools in San Jose: Sacred Heart Nativity School for boys, opened in 2001, and Our Lady of Grace Nativity School for girls, opened in 2006. Both schools provide Catholic education to low-income students and prepare them for college preparatory high school programs.

“Serving at Sacred Heart Nativity Schools has been a great joy,” said Fr. Pabst. “I’m excited to have the opportunity to launch another school for members of our community who find themselves underserved.  I look forward to helping these young people come to know their dreams and to help realize them. To graduate 125 students a year who are college-ready is a blessing for their families and for our community.”

Cristo Rey schools provide a quality, Catholic, college preparatory education to young people living in poverty in urban communities. Cristo Rey students also participate in an innovative Corporate Work Study Program that provides them with real-world work experience, which helps fund the majority of their education and provides on-the-job training.

Bishop Patrick J. McGrath of the Diocese of San Jose is supportive of the new high school: “The Society of Jesus has a long history and commitment to Catholic education nationwide and particularly in the Diocese of San Jose. I am excited about the launch of Cristo Rey San Jose as an opportunity to bring education to those most in need on the east side of San Jose.”

Learn more at the Cristo Rey San Jose High School website.

For the past six years, as the founding president of Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory School, Fr. Devron helped to bring quality, affordable secondary education to low-income students on Chicago’s West Side.

Previous to his work at Christ the King, Fr. Devron served at Regis High School in New York City as the founding director of REACH (Recruiting Excellence in Academics for Catholic High Schools), designed to make Jesuit secondary education accessible to academically gifted middle school students of modest means. In the mid-1990s, Fr. Devron served as Executive Director of the Inner-City Teaching Corps in Chicago.

Fr. Devron joined the Society of Jesus in 1991, after graduating from the University of Notre Dame and working as a volunteer teacher in the Bronx at Cardinal Spellman High School.

“I am grateful and encouraged by the Fordham Prep Board’s confidence in me and excited to help lead one of the premiere Jesuit secondary schools in the country — especially one that exemplifies such high academic standards and has an outstanding record of developing students who become men for others, dedicated to God’s greater glory,” Fr. Devron said after being selected. [Fordham Prep]

Fr. Luedtke came to the close-knit school of 150 young men at the invitation of his provincial, Jesuit Father Tim Kesicki. “He offered me the opportunity to go to a school that directly impacts the city of Detroit and those young men who find themselves most in need of what we can offer here as Jesuits and as Catholics, and that’s a great opportunity for me,” Fr. Luedtke says.

“When I walk into school I’m really filled with a sense of hope — not only for the possibilities of the day, but hope for these young men and the faculty and staff,” he says.

Fr. Luedtke is impressed that three alumni have already come back to work on staff at Loyola High. “Their presence and care for our young men really makes a difference,” he says.

“This school is a gem in Detroit because it’s made it — it’s made it 20 solid years in the city. It shows the rest of the city that if we commit to what’s good for the city and good for our young people and we invest in it, that good things can come out of the schools,” says Fr. Luedtke.

Learn more about Loyola High School by watching the Ignatian News Network video below.

In the first episode, on faith and spirituality in action, three New York Province Jesuits explain what they love about serving in the Pacific.

Jesuit Father John Mulreany does pastoral ministry and teaches at Yap Catholic High School, which opened last year. He’s happy with how the Catholic community pulled together to support the new school.

“People are really passionate about deepening their faith … and having more opportunities for prayer and worship,” Fr. Mulreany says.

Jesuit Father Richard McAuliff is director of Xavier High in Chuuk. He says that one of the best aspects of serving there for the past 20 years is that everything is about relationships.

“We might not have the technology, we might not have the modern conveniences, but what I’ve been taught by the people out here is that the most important thing is relationships — whether it’s with God, each other or yourself,” says Fr. McAuliff.

Jesuit Father Marc Roselli, who also serves at Xavier High, says it’s been one of his most gratifying teaching experiences because the students are filled with life, receptive and faith-filled.

Watch the first episode below and visit the New York Province website to view the other episodes in the series.

For his long experiment, Jesuit novice Tim Casey taught at Yap Catholic High School in Micronesia. In this shortened piece below, you can read about Casey’s experience. The full piece can be found on this page of the New York,  New England and Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus’ vocations website.

Before I entered the Jesuits, I had been a high school teacher. I worked in two affluent school districts in the metro-Boston area and I felt confident that I had become a good teacher. I knew that there were better teachers than I, but I was confident that I was good. And so when the novice director asked what I wanted to do for long experiment, teaching was not at the top of my list. In the novitiate, I had enjoyed branching out into other ministries. I had worked in the jails and prisons of New York State, I had helped administer an annotated version of the Spiritual Exercises and I had worked as a hospital orderly in the Bronx. I remember feeling lukewarm about returning to my former profession, and made my preferences known to the novice director about what would be best for long experiment.

The Jesuits have an old Latin expression, agere contra, which roughly translated means to go against the grain. By this, St. Ignatius of Loyola meant that if you feel a certain resistance to something in your life, then it might be beneficial for you to engage those feelings, trying to see what you are resisting and why you are resisting it. And so when my novice director asked me to teach during my long experiment, I said that I would be willing, but I was not particularly excited about the prospect. However, I did make one request of him: Could this teaching position be in some way unconventional and different from my former career? He honored my request. I was sent to a remote island in the North Western Pacific Ocean to teach in a newly established high school in Yap, Micronesia.

Yap is part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a place that has been called “The edge of the world,” by a Jesuit who spent most of his life here. It is one of four states that make up the FSM. I didn’t know much about Micronesia, except that the Jesuits ran a prestigious school on the island of Chuuk called Xavier High School. But that was not where I was headed. Where was this place?

The local church on Yap had been trying for a number of years to open a Catholic high school. In the summer of 2011, two New York Province Jesuits were sent to Yap to make good on the promise of Catholic education and opened Yap Catholic High School in August of that year. They had four teachers (including themselves), two borrowed classrooms, and 34 students. I would become the fifth teacher, teaching Science, Social Studies, moderating the robotics club, acting as an assistant basketball coach, and doing a variety of other odds and ends to aid them in getting this school off the ground and running.

It is an intriguing place, a place that seems to be unencumbered by the events that have transpired in the other parts of the globe. The expression, “An island onto itself” seems to be fitting in more ways than one.

The most rewarding part of my experience on Yap has been the opportunity of getting to know our students. They are naturally curious, polite, pleasant to be with, and somewhat unspoiled by Western culture. I realized this last point after several pop culture references in class were greeted with looks of bewilderment. Television on the island is available, but few are able to afford it and many of our students had never been on a computer before this year. Their world looks very different from the one that I came from, and they are curious to learn about “my world.” This school gives students the opportunity to do just that: to grow, to learn, to mature, to develop their faith and to find their deepest desires. It is a safe place, a haven for kids who, very often, come from difficult and broken family situations. I am often struck by just how many of my students come from very tough family circumstances.

In addition to my teaching duties, there was a practical element to my time in Yap; the task of actually helping to build a new school. Nearly every Saturday morning, community members would gather at our building site with machetes, shovels, chainsaws, picks, and a variety of other tools. My Saturdays were spent clearing land for the new buildings, picking up garbage that had been dumped and left many years before, and driving a pick-up truck filled to the brim with volunteers who desired to help but had no transportation. Local women provided lunch on plates woven together from palm leaves. The fare: fish bellies, tarot, coconut crabs, and yams. As the Saturdays piled up, I began to realize just how much I was enjoying these “clearings,” as we called them. I began to look forward to them as a weekly event, almost like a block party. As the buildings began to rise, it became very clear how much the community was rallying around this school, taking part in its construction, and owning it. This is truly a project where many hands contributed many hours of labor. It is something we can all be proud of!

My experience in Micronesia was a blessed time. St. Ignatius of Loyola tells retreatants in the conclusion of the Spiritual Exercises “to ask for an interior knowledge of the many gifts we have received, in order that, being entirely grateful, we may be able, in all things, to love and serve God.” Ignatius’ statement, more than anything I am able to write, best describes my time in Micronesia. In the smiles of the people whom I have met, in the faces and the daily interaction with the students of YCHS, I have witnessed the presence of God among us, the risen Jesus. What a great gift! I was sent to Yap as a teacher, to help students learn, to give something of myself and my talents. But, as the prayer of St. Francis states, “It is in giving that we receive.” As I leave Yap, I leave with a deeper knowledge of this gifted time, and of the many gifted relationships I have developed and come to value. It is here that the vowed life begins to make sense to me, and that choice is confirmed and strengthened in the faces of those with whom I have met and come to love. Although I came here as a teacher, I am comforted by the knowledge that I leave having received much more than I ever bargained for. Kammagar! (Thank You.)

Available for free at the iTunes App Store, the Jesuit app operates on any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad; a similar app will soon be available at the Android Marketplace for use on devices such as the Droid, Evo and HTC Touch.

The new app allows users to locate Jesuit retreat centers, schools and parishes across the U.S., read the latest news and information about the Jesuits, and access Jesuit prayers and spirituality documents.

The app’s three sections include:

Locations
Here users can find Jesuit apostolates – parishes, retreat centers, colleges and universities. It includes easy-to-use directions and contact information for any Jesuit institution in the U.S. and is searchable by apostolate name, by the user’s current location or through any address the user enters.

News
All the latest news stories from National Jesuit News are displayed here.  Users can tap on any headline to view the full story, share the link with friends or open the story in their browser.

Prayer
In this section, users can view prayers, spirituality documents and background information on the Society of Jesus.

The video below explains in more detail how the app operates. Visit the app information page here to find out more.

After serving in the Navy during World War II followed by a stint as a Chicago police officer, Br. Small entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1952 at Milford, Ohio. When he came to Loyola Academy, Br. Small picked up a paintbrush and returned to a hobby he’d enjoyed since his childhood – painting. During the school’s first fundraiser in 1970, Br. Small included 36 of his original pieces, all of which were quickly purchased. Since then, he contributes between 60 to 100 paintings each year to Loyola Academy’s fundraiser and raises upwards of $45,000 annually for the school. The funds from the sale of his artwork are used to endow a scholarship fund for students in need.

While Br. Small’s work as a carpenter and an artist has done much for Loyola Academy, few would say those are his most important contributions. He’s known by students, alumni, staff, parents and coaches as a true man for others – someone with a generous spirit who humbly attributes his abilities to God’s grace.  It is his generosity that most would say is his great contribution to Loyola Academy.

Find out more about Br. Jim Small and his artistic talents in the Ignatian News Network video below:

Fr. Devron has come full circle in many ways. In 1995 he was a Jesuit novice in Chicago when he witnessed the beginning of the country’s first Cristo Rey school, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, while attending the press conference announcing that the Jesuits were starting the school.

Christ the King, which follows the Cristo Rey work-study model, opened at a temporary site with 120 students in 2008, and its brand new building opened in January 2010.

Ignatian News Network met up with Fr. Devron to learn more about the man behind the collar.

A recent addition to Brophy is Loyola Academy, which provides a Catholic, Jesuit education to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade boys who demonstrate academic promise but have had limited educational opportunities. Loyola Academy currently serves one class of sixth grade boys, and will add a new sixth grade class for the 2012/2013 school year.

Fr. Reese recently spoke with us by phone from Phoenix to discuss the work of Loyola Academy and about his own background as a Jesuit. You can listen to our podcast with Reese via the player below.

Fifty years ago,  in 1961,  Jesuit Father Patrick Howell entered the Society of Jesus at Sheridan, Ore, the novitiate for Jesuits in the Northwest.Today, Fr. Howell is the rector (religious superior) of the Jesuit Community at Seattle University and professor of pastoral theology. In this piece for the Seattle Times, Fr. Howell looks back upon his time as a Jesuit and his own travails. 

A recent graduate of Gonzaga University, I was only 21, but my peers, most of whom had entered directly from a Jesuit high school, such as Seattle Prep or Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma, considered me one of the “old men.”

The years pass swiftly, but they have been full of grace and certainly much more joy than sorrow.

I was blessed with first-class opportunities for advanced education. After initial studies in spirituality, prayer, Jesuit tradition and a dose of Latin and Greek, I studied philosophy and English literature at Boston College.

Then came three years of high-school teaching at Jesuit High in Portland. I survived the trials and testing by high-school boys and grew to love the personal interaction and challenge of teaching English, creative writing and poetry and advising the high school newspaper.

This “formation” period of teaching in high school probably accounts for why most Jesuits are such good teachers and homilists. Survival demands that you develop rhetorical skills and a flair for the dramatic — even though it’s not native to your personality — in order to grab the attention of 28 sophomore boys for 50 minutes each day…

But another significant portion of my life has been spiritual care of those who have suffered severe mental illness.

All this arose as a surprise, when I suffered a psychotic breakdown myself at age 35 and then recovered through excellent psychiatric care and the good graces and support of family and friends…

This “grace” led to an amazingly rich ministry with people with mental illness and their families.

Years ago, Jesuit Father Michael Buckley, in an address to Jesuit seminarians asked, “Is this man sufficiently weak to be a priest?”…

Why weakness? Because, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is in this deficiency, in this interior lack, in this weakness, that the efficacy of the ministry and priesthood of Christ lies. “For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.” (Hebrews 2:18)

I think, after 50 years, I can rejoice in being “weak enough” to allow the grace of Christ to shine through and carry the load.

More of Howell’s life as a Jesuit can be found in this piece in the Seattle Times.