Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro,  the editor of the influential Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, U.S. Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, a Portuguese poet, a Spanish architect, two astrophysicists, a Belgian journalist and a curator at the Vatican Museums were named by Pope Benedict XVI to help advise the Pontifical Council for Culture.

For the first time since 1993, religious and laymen — not just cardinals and bishops — were named full members of the council.

The new lay members are French philosopher and writer Jean-Luc Marion and Estonian classical composer Arvo Part. Eleven new consultors or advisers were named to the council, including Bruno Coppi, a professor of plasma physics and astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Others include: Father Jose Tolentino De Mendonca, a Portuguese theologian and poet; Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect; Piero Benvenuti, an Italian astrophysicist; Wolf Joachim Singer, a professor of neurology and head of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany; Marguerite Peeters, a Belgian journalist; and Micol Forti, the curator of the Vatican Museums’ collection of contemporary art.

Blessed John Paul II created the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982 with the aim of helping the world’s cultures encounter the message of the Gospel. In 1993, the late pope united the council with the council for dialogue with nonbelievers thus paving the way for using culture as a bridge for dialogue between people of faith and those who profess no religious beliefs.

Today, the Gregorian is part of a larger consortium consisting of three schools serving more than 3,800 students: The Pontifical Gregorian University, The Pontifical Biblical Institute and The Pontifical Oriental Institute for Eastern Christian Studies.

In the United States, the Gregorian University Foundation was established in 1972 to raise the needed funds for scholarships, academic chairs, libraries and capital improvements for the Pontifical Gregorian University Consortium.

In this month’s National Jesuit News podcast, we talk with the foundation’s vice president, Geoff Loftus, on what the Gregorian University provides to the Church and the legacy and impact of its scholars and students.

In an exclusive to National Jesuit News, Rogers shares his experience of the late pontiff’s beatification…

In the past few days it has always been crowded around the simplest tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica. This is not the tomb of St. Peter, with its grand Bernini Baldacchino, nor is it the one of the tombs of a pope surrounded by grand sculptures. This is a simple marble slab with the name of the pope buried there, engraved in red. The word around Rome is that the waiting list to offer a Mass at the altar of this tomb is already weeks long. Michelangelo’s Pietà, usually the main attraction in this section of the basilica, garners only a few visitors now. The crush of people has made it difficult to keep the Blessed Sacrament Chapel open lately, and so the tabernacle has shifted to the front of the church from where it usually resides. There, wedged between the chapels of the Pietà and the Blessed Sacrament, the resting place of Blessed John Paul II is simple, and yet there is a profound sense of the importance of this space to so many people.

When word broke back in January that John Paul II would be beatified last Sunday, I was among the first in my Jesuit community to say that I would be leaving Rome. Citing my desire to flee ahead of the crowds, I had planned to go south into the mountains of Calabria, or north to Tuscany. One thing, however, was sure. I was going to get out. Over the course of a couple of months my thoughts on this changed, though. The truth is that as the beatification day approached I wanted to be here more and more. When the invitation to distribute communion for the beatification arrived, all of my ideas about fleeing the city were cancelled, and I responded that I would be there.

It was 5:30am on the morning of May 1, 2011 and although tired, I headed off to a church event here in Rome. Wearing an old borrowed cassock, I crossed the Tiber not far from the General Curia of the Society and waited for the police escort to take us to where we would be distributing communion. In the crowd of over a million people, all around us you could hear languages from all over the world. There were groups of people singing and dancing. There was a sense of joy, and even among the many police who were clearly working overtime, there seemed to be a sense of relief that, for once, there was a gathering of people here in Rome that wasn’t a protest. The moment of this celebration was a moment to celebrate that one of us, someone whom we knew, had almost assuredly gone before us into the place where we all hope to go.

I have been wondering over the past few days just what it is that changed in me over the course of those months. Why did I want to stay here in Rome? Pictures of John Paul II have gone up all over the city; calendars with his face were on sale in nearly every gift shop. The number of Polish pilgrims to Rome increased exponentially; we had to add a Polish translation of the guidebook to the rooms of St. Ignatius. Churches put up little displays about John Paul II’s visit to their parishes. Even some of my Italian friends who are a little jaded about religion in general expressed excitement. It’s hard not to get swept up in that sort of energy, but the answer to why I found myself finally wanting to be here came one evening when I was out for a walk around the Quirinale with my friend Fiore, who works for one of the Church’s many social service agencies here in Rome.

In talking about John Paul II, Fiore told me about how much this Polish pope was loved by so many of the people here in Rome. It wasn’t because they always agreed with him, which they didn’t. It certainly wasn’t for his immediate mastery of Italian, which he asked them to excuse him for within minutes of being named pope. Rather, it was for one simple reason: they felt like they knew him. Over the course of his papacy, Blessed John Paul II, like any good diocesan bishop, visited the parishes of the diocese of Rome and got to know the people. He welcomed the young people of the Rome inside of the imposing walls of the Vatican, and did his best, despite coming from what he himself called “a far off land,” to do as the Romans did, and be as Roman as he could.

In that moment it struck me why I was getting more and more excited about John Paul’s beatification. The truth is that what made this pope special for Fiore, and for myself as well, was the sense that he was among us. We saw that he had a sense of humor; that he could laugh and be joyful. We knew that he hadn’t always handled everything perfectly as pope, but we still could see something that was genuinely admirable in this man as a human being. We were the JPII generation of the Church, and for the better part of our lives, he has been the only pope we have ever known.

His simple tomb makes sense. For all of the reasons why we admire Bl. John Paul II, something more ornate would betray the memory of a man whom we admire because of his common touch. My generation heard him offer to us the opportunity to open the doors to Christ, and to not be afraid to enter into that life. Somehow in the paradox of this simple, yet most visited tomb in the basilica, the reality of the weekend comes into focus. The tomb reminds us, and perhaps especially those of us just starting out in a life of service to the Church and the people of God, that the truth is that we don’t need to be perfect, or universally loved, or able to speak languages well. It does this in one word, etched in red on white marble, describing a man that we knew all too well. “Beato,” “Blessed.”

In an exclusive to National Jesuit News, Rogers shares his experience of the late pontiff’s beatification…

In the past few days it has always been crowded around the simplest tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica. This is not the tomb of St. Peter, with its grand Bernini Baldacchino, nor is it the one of the tombs of a pope surrounded by grand sculptures. This is a simple marble slab with the name of the pope buried there, engraved in red. The word around Rome is that the waiting list to offer a Mass at the altar of this tomb is already weeks long. Michelangelo’s Pietà, usually the main attraction in this section of the basilica, garners only a few visitors now. The crush of people has made it difficult to keep the Blessed Sacrament Chapel open lately, and so the tabernacle has shifted to the front of the church from where it usually resides. There, wedged between the chapels of the Pietà and the Blessed Sacrament, the resting place of Blessed John Paul II is simple, and yet there is a profound sense of the importance of this space to so many people.

When word broke back in January that John Paul II would be beatified last Sunday, I was among the first in my Jesuit community to say that I would be leaving Rome. Citing my desire to flee ahead of the crowds, I had planned to go south into the mountains of Calabria, or north to Tuscany. One thing, however, was sure. I was going to get out. Over the course of a couple of months my thoughts on this changed, though. The truth is that as the beatification day approached I wanted to be here more and more. When the invitation to distribute communion for the beatification arrived, all of my ideas about fleeing the city were cancelled, and I responded that I would be there.

It was 5:30am on the morning of May 1, 2011 and although tired, I headed off to a church event here in Rome. Wearing an old borrowed cassock, I crossed the Tiber not far from the General Curia of the Society and waited for the police escort to take us to where we would be distributing communion. In the crowd of over a million people, all around us you could hear languages from all over the world. There were groups of people singing and dancing. There was a sense of joy, and even among the many police who were clearly working overtime, there seemed to be a sense of relief that, for once, there was a gathering of people here in Rome that wasn’t a protest. The moment of this celebration was a moment to celebrate that one of us, someone whom we knew, had almost assuredly gone before us into the place where we all hope to go.

I have been wondering over the past few days just what it is that changed in me over the course of those months. Why did I want to stay here in Rome? Pictures of John Paul II have gone up all over the city; calendars with his face were on sale in nearly every gift shop. The number of Polish pilgrims to Rome increased exponentially; we had to add a Polish translation of the guidebook to the rooms of St. Ignatius. Churches put up little displays about John Paul II’s visit to their parishes. Even some of my Italian friends who are a little jaded about religion in general expressed excitement. It’s hard not to get swept up in that sort of energy, but the answer to why I found myself finally wanting to be here came one evening when I was out for a walk around the Quirinale with my friend Fiore, who works for one of the Church’s many social service agencies here in Rome.

In talking about John Paul II, Fiore told me about how much this Polish pope was loved by so many of the people here in Rome. It wasn’t because they always agreed with him, which they didn’t. It certainly wasn’t for his immediate mastery of Italian, which he asked them to excuse him for within minutes of being named pope. Rather, it was for one simple reason: they felt like they knew him. Over the course of his papacy, Blessed John Paul II, like any good diocesan bishop, visited the parishes of the diocese of Rome and got to know the people. He welcomed the young people of the Rome inside of the imposing walls of the Vatican, and did his best, despite coming from what he himself called “a far off land,” to do as the Romans did, and be as Roman as he could.

In that moment it struck me why I was getting more and more excited about John Paul’s beatification. The truth is that what made this pope special for Fiore, and for myself as well, was the sense that he was among us. We saw that he had a sense of humor; that he could laugh and be joyful. We knew that he hadn’t always handled everything perfectly as pope, but we still could see something that was genuinely admirable in this man as a human being. We were the JPII generation of the Church, and for the better part of our lives, he has been the only pope we have ever known.

His simple tomb makes sense. For all of the reasons why we admire Bl. John Paul II, something more ornate would betray the memory of a man whom we admire because of his common touch. My generation heard him offer to us the opportunity to open the doors to Christ, and to not be afraid to enter into that life. Somehow in the paradox of this simple, yet most visited tomb in the basilica, the reality of the weekend comes into focus. The tomb reminds us, and perhaps especially those of us just starting out in a life of service to the Church and the people of God, that the truth is that we don’t need to be perfect, or universally loved, or able to speak languages well. It does this in one word, etched in red on white marble, describing a man that we knew all too well. “Beato,” “Blessed.”

The meeting was sponsored by the pontifical councils for culture and for social communications. The councils accepted requests to attend, then drew the names of the 150 participants once the requests were divided according to geography, language and whether the blog was personal or institutional.

The Vatican meeting was not designed as a how-to seminar, and it was not aimed at developing a code of conduct, but rather to acknowledge the role of blogs in modern communications and to start a dialogue between the bloggers and the Vatican.

Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of Pontifical Council for Social Communications, welcomed the bloggers to the Vatican and told them the Vatican wanted to begin “a dialogue between faith and the emerging culture” that is the blogosphere.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told the bloggers that while Pope Benedict XVI “is a person who does not Tweet or have a personal blog, he is very attentive and knows well what is happening in the world” and supports Catholic media efforts, as seen by his Good Friday television interview and by his book-length interview with the German writer Peter Seewald.

“Bloggers are important” for forming and informing church members, Father Lombardi said, but anyone who influences what Catholics think must recognize the responsibility that brings with it.

Father Lombardi said he had to thank bloggers for the times they acted to explain and spread church teaching and the thought of Pope Benedict.

But he also said that the whole question of bloggers’ self-centeredness and “ego” is “one of the problems which is worth reflecting on,” because while it is a danger for all communicators, a communicator who calls him- or herself Catholic must focus first on serving others.

[Catholic News Service]

Pope Benedict XVI and Father General Adolfo Nicolás

Jesuit Superior General Adolfo Nicolás announced last month a major restructuring in the Society of Jesus’ governance structure at the General Curia in Rome.

In a letter sent to the whole Society, Father General explained that the changes will occur in three ways; a restructuring of the secretariats at the General Curia, instituting a commission on the Society’s Mission, and creating a reflection group for continued discernment of mission.

“With the help of the General Counselors, we are restructuring the Secretariats. The structure that has been in force till now has primarily been organized according to apostolic sectors.”

The reorganization of the secretariats will break the focus on apostolic sectors and instead focus on the important dimensions of the Society’s mission, which should be present in all apostolic sectors. The General Curia will now have Secretaries for the Service of Faith, the Promotion of Justice and Collaboration with Others.

Father General explained that much of the ordinary governance such as admission to final vows and appointment of superiors will stay the same. The changes being made were in fact prompted by the 35^th General Congregation and meetings with major superiors in the Society.

“The changes we are introducing concern primarily our capacity to address issues related to our mission, with the flexibility, depth and creativity required at this moment of history and the life of the Church,” wrote Fr. Nicolas.

To read the full letter from Father General, and specifics on the restructuring, visit the [Jesuit Curia]

Pope Benedict XVI and Father General Adolfo Nicolás

Jesuit Superior General Adolfo Nicolás announced last month a major restructuring in the Society of Jesus’ governance structure at the General Curia in Rome.

In a letter sent to the whole Society, Father General explained that the changes will occur in three ways; a restructuring of the secretariats at the General Curia, instituting a commission on the Society’s Mission, and creating a reflection group for continued discernment of mission.

“With the help of the General Counselors, we are restructuring the Secretariats. The structure that has been in force till now has primarily been organized according to apostolic sectors.”

The reorganization of the secretariats will break the focus on apostolic sectors and instead focus on the important dimensions of the Society’s mission, which should be present in all apostolic sectors. The General Curia will now have Secretaries for the Service of Faith, the Promotion of Justice and Collaboration with Others.

Father General explained that much of the ordinary governance such as admission to final vows and appointment of superiors will stay the same. The changes being made were in fact prompted by the 35^th General Congregation and meetings with major superiors in the Society.

“The changes we are introducing concern primarily our capacity to address issues related to our mission, with the flexibility, depth and creativity required at this moment of history and the life of the Church,” wrote Fr. Nicolas.

To read the full letter from Father General, and specifics on the restructuring, visit the [Jesuit Curia]

The initiative is called “Unexpected Connections: Journey to the Heart of the Society,” and it includes guided tours by Jesuits.

“It is a rare opportunity for everyone who comes to visit us, but it is also an opportunity for us, Jesuits, to open our doors to people. We are not used to having people in our house, ” said Italian Jesuit Father Flavio Bottaro.

See more in the video clip from Rome TV below: