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Italy - Malta - Albania form one new Jesuit Province.

The celebration on the 1st of July clearly reflected the richness and complexity of the journey that’s about to start.

“As with any birth, that of the newly born Euro-Mediterranean Province, brings with it both happiness and uncertainty”, Father General Arturo Sosa told the 520 Jesuits gathered at the Gesù church for the official ‘birth’ of the new province.

The celebration, that was attended by lay collaborators and friends of the Society, started off with the proclamation of the decrees establishing the new Province and the nomination of Fr. Gianfranco Matarazzo as provincial. The diversity of languages used throughout incarnated the richness and complexity of the journey ahead: the liturgical prayer in Italian, the first reading in Maltese, the second in Albanian, the Gospel in English, the prayers of the faithful in all 4 languages, without forgetting the Holy Father and some other hymns in Latin.

“Almighty God… may we always act in communion with your Son so that, impassioned with charity and united by the spirit of obedience, we may carry in our hearts the union of souls that is the fruit of your grace”: the collect of the special celebration for the “union of souls” revealed the importance of this historic moment for the Society of Jesus.

“The complex and changing social realities of Albania, Malta and Italy challenge our ability to understand and discern”, shared Fr. Sosa in his homily.

“The uncertainty linked to the unknown should also encourage us to put our faith in God, the same God who asked Abraham to leave his land at the age of 75”.

“We share a beautiful history and feel we are called to pursue it with the creation of this new Province, which was not born out of bureaucratic or organizational needs”, said Fr. Matarazzo at the end of the celebration. “It is an answer to what we Jesuits experience as God’s calling, a calling everyone is invited to share in”.

At the end of the Mass, Father General and the concelebrants headed in a procession to the altar of St. Ignatius to venerate his relics and present him a prayer for the Euro-Mediterranean Province. He then laid down flowers in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Way, patroness of the new reality, together with the Albanian martyrs. Festivities followed in the courtyard of the Gesù.

The big group of Maltese present, almost 50 of them, were headed by Fr. Patrick Magro, the outgoing provincial of Malta. When asked how he was living this moment, he replied: “As Jesuits we become part of the Society of Jesus not of a Province, which is simply an administrative entity to help Father General govern the Society spread throughout the world.

It’s also true that we enter the novitiate of a particular Province, which kind of gives us a sense belonging, a home”. When the previous Father General, Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, visited Malta to announce the creation of a new Province, “he insisted that it had to be something new, not a sum of the two Provinces [that of Italy and Malta]. This is beneficial both to Italy as it opens up to this new reality and to us, given our small size and the need to be part of something bigger”.

Are there any differences between the two? “Sure, culturally for example Malta used to be a British colony, we have our own education system, a British way of thinking, albeit our cultural ties to Italy are many. For years we’ve been following the same formation, so this union is not completely new. Moreover, the collaboration between Albania, Italy and Malta will enrich all of us: united by the same spirituality, we’ll help each other to live our mission better”.

Fr. Magro also underlined the importance of apostolic planning: “When thinking of the Spiritual Exercises, we will not just think in terms of the Maltese reality, but that of a wider, Euro-Mediterranean Province. In our youth apostolate, the challenge will be to avoid thinking only about the Maltese youth, the chaplaincy of the University of Malta, and collaborate with Italy and Albania... with the chaplaincies of La Sapienza and the Università di Pisa, with Tirana and Scutari. Our collaboration has to extend to all our apostolates, including migration. The different JRSs have already worked together but more needs to be done”.

What are the difficulties? “It is such an amazing project but for some Jesuits, especially those in old age, change is way more difficult. It will take us years of working together to create a new way of thinking. Change requires time: we Jesuits do a lot of spiritual exercises to have interior freedom, which is not something easy or to be taken for granted. We will need to pray more for us not to be so attached to our Province. At the end, we all form part of the same Society”.

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