From 23 November to 3 December 2025, the Salamanca Centre for Spirituality hosted the first international gathering “Ignite the Way”, an initiative born from the desire of Fr Arturo Sosa SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, to form facilitators for processes of communal discernment. Around one hundred participants—Jesuits, women religious, and lay collaborators—from the six Conferences of Provinces of the Society of Jesus and the Jesuit Refugee Service took part in nine days of intensive shared work. Discernment in common is a key tool for an apostolic structure as the conferences of provincials given that the conferences’ activity is based on fostering the gratuitous collaboration of very different people from different provinces and works.

A truly global gathering

The geographical and charismatic diversity of the facilitators speaks for itself: participants came from Asia Pacific, Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe, and South Asia, representing contexts as diverse as Micronesia and Myanmar.

The first days of the gathering were dedicated to setting the framework: synodality and the life of the Church, read through the lens of Ignatian spirituality and communal discernment. Through a series of presentations, participants traced the connections between the impulse of the Second Vatican Council, the Ignatian tradition of discerning together, and the synodal path proposed by Pope Francis.

From there, the work became more practical. Participants organised themselves by Conferences in order to connect insights, develop strategies, and bring perspectives closer together, sharing experiences of accompaniment in very different contexts. This was done through the study of around twenty real-life cases: provincial projects, the relocation of communities, discernment processes with young people, and more.

These cases made it possible not only to gather good practices, but also to name concrete difficulties that arise in discernment processes: how to deal with the presence of conflictive individuals, how to accompany deeply divided groups, or how to integrate within a single process voices coming from very different cultural, social, or ecclesial contexts.

What it means to discern in common

Communal discernment integrates several practical elements, rooted in the origins of the Church, the Society of Jesus, and the Ignatian tradition of recent decades: prayer, attentive listening to reality, spiritual conversation, and decision-making before God through a shared search.

One of the frameworks explored during these days in Salamanca structures the process around three simple yet demanding questions:

• Who are we?

• What are we called to?

• How do we develop this call?

Read in the light of the Spiritual Exercises, these questions help to understand that not only the individual person, but also the apostolic body—a community, a congregation, a diocese, a network of works—can discern its path before God.

A process that begins, not an isolated event

The Salamanca gathering marked the starting point of a process that is already underway. Participants are now organised by continents and geographical areas, with the mission of promoting formation programmes adapted to their contexts over the coming years. The project also foresees the development of shared resources and materials, accessible through a common platform, to support the formation of new facilitators.