400+ years serving Christ’s mission

Foundation of the Society of Jesus

Pope Paul III formally approved the Society of Jesus with the bull Regimini militantis Eccelesiae.

There were ten initial members. They had been drawn together as students in Paris by Ignatius of Loyola and his Spiritual Exercises. During his studies, Ignatius had visited England in 1531 to seek alms.

In 1541 two of these first companions, AlfonsoSalmerón and Paschase Broët, were sent to Ireland via Scotland, reaching Edinburgh in December 1541 where they were received by King James V. Ignatius’s letters of guidance to them are remarkable for how he applies his insights on spiritual discernment to practical details.

Start of Jesuit Mission to England

The possibility of a Jesuit mission to England was first raised in 1578, but the Jesuit Superior General Everard Mercurian had concerns about accepting yet another mission. The mission was approved in 1580 by Pope Gregory XIII and England became the first permanent Jesuit mission that remained independent with Robert Persons SJ named the Superior of the English Mission. The first Jesuit missioners, Edmund Campion, Robert Persons, and Ralph Emerson departed from Rome for England in April 1580, and arrived clandestinely a few months later.

Martyrdom of Edmund Campion, Alexander Briant and Fr Ralph Sherwin

The two Jesuits Edmund Campion and Alexander Briant, along with a secular priest Ralph Sherwin, were hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. 

Campion had been captured in July 1581, and having been tortured, had been convicted of treason. He was the first Jesuit to be martyred in England.

Briant was admitted to the Society of Jesus shortly before being executed. He too was tortured while imprisoned in an attempt to discover the location of Robert Persons SJ.

Sherwin was the first member of the English College in Rome to be martyred.

All three priests were canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Relics of Campion and Briant are featured in the online exhibition How Bleedeth Burning Love.

Holywell in North Wales was an important pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages, with pilgrimages made there by (among very many others) Richard I, Henry V, and Henry Tudor before the Battle of Bosworth. Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII had a special devotion to the saint and the shrine. The devotion at Holywell survived the Reformation in Wales; indeed the area was something of a centre of Catholicism, thanks to its remoteness and the support from local gentry families.

Jesuits served at the shrine for 340 years from 1590 to 1930. The Jesuit staff there tended to be Welsh rather than English. The shrine has always been a point of pilgrimage by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and has always had local support.

In 1662, the Jesuits at Holywell bought some land on the other side of a hill a few miles away – Manaefa – which nearly 200 years later was used to build what is now the Jesuit Spirituality Centre of St Beuno’s. 

In 1878, a discovery of a wooden box containing two skulls and a variety of bones was made in an attic of the Jesuit priest’s house in Holywell. These bones are featured in the online exhibition How Bleedeth Burning Love.

Foundation by Robert Persons SJ of the English College at St Omers

Robert Persons SJ founded a College at at St Omers (now Saint-Omer), near Calais, to educate the sons of English Catholics, who were forbidden from giving their children a Catholic education in England. After some uncertain beginnings, it flourished, and, together with a prepatory school for the younger boys established at nearby Watten, is estimated to have educated about 4,300 boys by 1772. At that point, the French government expelled the Jesuits and their works from France, and the school moved to Bruges. The following year the Society was suppressed by the Pope, and the school moved to Liège, a small principality, whose ruler welcomed the now ex-Jesuits, and allowed the school to continue successfully.

In 1794, threatened by the forces of revolutionary France, the school moved one more time to Stonyhurst in Lancashire, where it has remained ever since.

Gunpowder Plot

In 1605 a number of Catholic laymen were implicated in what is called the Gunpowder Plot. Had it succeeded, the House of Lords would have been blown up at the moment when James I was opening Parliament. But the government got wind of the conspiracy (if indeed it had not covertly incited it), and the explosives were found before they went off. The Jesuits were not directly involved, though some may have known of the conspiracy under the seal of confession. The discovery of the plot led to a convulsion of anti-Catholic feeling, with the Jesuits a particular target.

After a hunt across the country, Jesuit brothers Nicholas Owen and Ralph Ashley were captured at Hindlip Hall near Worcester. Also hiding there were the Jesuit Provincial Henry Garnet and Edward Oldcorne. All four of them were to die, Owen under torture at the Tower of London, the only Jesuit actually to die there. Oldcorne and Ashley were executed at Worcester, and Garnet was executed in 1606 in London.

John Gerard SJ, already famed for being one of the very few people to have escaped from the Tower of London, evaded capture and fled to the continent, where he died peacefully in Rome many years later. He was asked by Fr General Claudio Acquaviva to write his own account of the episode and subsequently his autobiography.  

Helena Wintour was the daughter of Robert Wintour, one of the conspirators, whose family name became tainted following the Gunpowder Plot. She was involved in subversive work of embroidering illegal Catholic vestments and defiantly embroidered her name on the vestments, which she bequeathed to the Jesuits on her death. She had close ties with Jesuits and her embroidery was influenced by Jesuit spirituality. An online exhibition of her vestments can be seen in the Hot Holy Ladies exhibition.

Martyrdom of Henry Garnet SJ

Henry Garnet, the English Jesuit Provincial, was executed in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.  He was accused of knowing about the plot in advance but not warning the authorities. There is scholarly debate today as to whether he did know about the plot or not, but if so it would have been because Robert Catesby had confessed it to him as a priest, and thus Garnet would not have been able to tell anyone.

Garnet was arrested on 27 January 1606, and from the 13 February 1606 was questioned by the Privy Council, both about his knowledge of the Gunpowder Plot and the Doctrine of Equivocation, which he had written a treatise on, and which his interrogators saw as lying.  

A bloodstained straw husk was saved from his execution and kept by the Jesuits until it was lost during the upheavals of the French Revolution. It was kept in a small brass box with its likeness engraved on it. A few of these are known to exist.

Very shortly after his execution, hostile accounts of his interrogation were published by Robert Barker, the King’s printer. The Jesuit Antiquarian Book collection holds copies of these.

The St Omers Press was established in 1608. In earlier years, attempts had been made to print from secret presses in England, but these invariably were all short-lived operations, and exceedingly dangerous for their operators. Robert Persons SJ had set up a press in Essex in 1580 under the charge of Stephen Brinkley, which published three or four books before being discovered. By June of 1581 Brinkley and his printers had set up again in Stonor Hall near Oxford, from where they published Edmund Campion SJ's famous Decem Rationes. In July this press was discovered and Brinkley sent to the Tower. A press was set up at Rouen, which did not last long, so from the late 1580s Catholic books for the English market were printed at commercial presses in Antwerp and other centres of printing. A decision was made to start a press at the College at St Omers. This was described in 1608 as ‘a little house with a printing-press and all things appertaining thereto, which we have of late fitted up right handsomely’. It was put in the charge of John Wilson, a priest though not a Jesuit, who oversaw printing but was also an author and translator himself.  He ran it until the 1650s. The press continued, and moved with the College in the second half of the 18^th century, finally settling at Stonyhurst in the 1790s. It still continues today. 

The British Jesuit Archive holds a large number of the early publications from the English College Press at St Omers in its Antiquarian Book Collection.

The English College at Liege was founded by John Gerard SJ. By the 18^th century it had become a college of higher studies and was used chiefly but not exclusively for the clerical formation of English Jesuits. However, this all changed after 1773, when the Society was suppressed by the Pope. Similar establishments in other areas were closed, and had to flee, but the ruler of the principality of Liege was sympathetic to the Jesuits and allowed the college to continue, run by the English ex-Jesuits.

The English College at St Omer had already fled once, to Bruges in 1762, and in 1773 moved once more, to the friendlier regime at Liege, and stayed there until threatened by the French Revolutionary armies, whereupon they moved in 1793 to Stonyhurst in Lancashire.

The English College had an extensive library, and when the English College from St Omers arrived there via Bruges they brought more books with them. When the English College was closed in the 18^th century, many of books were taken to safety at Stonyhurst and are still there, but others are now held in the Antiquarian Book collection at the British Jesuit Archives, and are identifiable by the inscriptions, usually on their title pages.  

Martyrdom of John Ogilvie SJ

The Scottish Jesuit John Ogilvie had entered the Society of Jesus in 1599 and after his ordination in Paris in 1613 repeatedly requested to be sent to Scotland to minister to the few remaining Catholics. In November 1613, he finally returned to Scotland in disguise and began preaching and celebrating Mass in secret in private homes. However, in October 1614 he was discovered and arrested in Glasgow. Having initially been treated well he was then tortured and tried for refusing to pledge allegiance to King James. He was hanged on 10 March 1615, but due to popular sympathy he was spared beheading and quartering. Ogilvie was beatified in 1929 and canonised on 17 October 1976, becoming the only post Reformation Scottish saint.

Foundation of the English Province of the Society of Jesus

The English Province was formed in 1623. Two successive Jesuit Superiors General, Claudio Acquaviva and Mutio Vitelleschi, were supportive of the nascent English Province and without them it might not have come into existence. The English Mission became a Vice-Province in 1619, and finally after a secret Jesuit Consult held in London in 1622, became a Province in January 1623. It was from the beginning anomalous. Because Jesuits could only exist in England in the teeth of official opposition, all the apparatus of a Province – Colleges, Residences, a Novitiate, schools and houses, had to exist abroad, alongside the structures of Jesuit Provinces in France, the Low Countries, Spain, Italy and France.

Richard Blount SJ (1565-1638) was the first Provincial (1623-1635). He had been on mission in England since 1591 and had always evaded capture. In 1597, he hid in a priest-hide in Scotney Castle for 10 days while pursuivants ransacked the house. He escaped and ran barefoot and almost naked across country for 14 miles and made it to safety at the house of a Catholic gentleman.

Blount was an excellent administrator. His organisational abilities were such that the structures he put in place in the nascent English Province continued for 200 years.

Arrival of the Jesuit Mission to Maryland

Andrew White SJ together with John Altham Gravenor SJ and Thomas Gervase SJ had set sail for the New World from Cowes on the Isle of Wight on 22 November 1633, and on landing at Maryland offered up the first Mass ‘ever offered in this part of the world’.  White worked closely with the local Native American peoples, especially the Yaocomico people, and wrote dictionaries and translated the Catechism into local languages.

The first history of the English Jesuits was published in 1660, by Henry More SJ. More had been the second English Provincial in the 1630s, and the Jesuit Superior General Mutio Vitelleschi had suggested that he should write the history of the Province. More did not start work on it in earnest until the 1650s, when he had access to the Archives of the English Province which were kept in Belgium for safekeeping. Between 1657 and 1660 More was Superior at the English College at St Omers, and despite the extra calls on his time this must have made, his book was published by the English College Press at St Omers in 1660.  

At around the same time, an Italian history of the English Province was published by the Jesuit Daniello Bartoli. More’s work was in Latin, and it was some time before a history of the English Province in English was available.

Popish Plot 1676-1681

The Popish plot was a paroxysm of anti-Catholic hysteria, started by Titus Oates, who had been educated by the Jesuits at St Omers and lived alongside them for a while. He used the information he had gained from this to spread lies against Catholics in general and the Jesuits in particular. His wild accusations were believed by the King and court, and Catholic nobles and members of religious orders were denounced, including 541 Jesuits.

As a result of Oates’ actions, at least 22 innocent men were executed, with the Society of Jesus suffering most. Nine Jesuits were executed, including William Ireland SJ on 24 January 1679, and 12 died in prison.

The Plot was fuelled by a propaganda war, with pamphlets from both sides being printed quickly and circulated fast around England. There are a number of these ephemeral items in the British Jesuit Archives, as well as long and detailed transcripts of the trials themselves.

With financial assistance from King James II, the Province opened a college in the Savoy, London, in May 1687. A second London college in Fenchurch Street followed in 1688. Both accepted Catholic and non-Catholic students. Other colleges were opened in Wigan, Wolverhampton, Bury St Edmunds, Lincoln, Pontefract, and Durham in England; and at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh. The colleges closed with the so-called “Glorious Revolution” in 1688, but Jesuit interest in education survived. The Province opened a school in Marylebone in the 1830s and more were founded in the 19^th Century.

The first post-reformation Catholic church in Preston was established by Jesuits in 1761. This was St Mary’s in Fishergate, which was replaced as the main church by St Wilfrid’s Church when it became too small. The building of St Wilfrid’s began in April 1792 and was finished within 14 months. Fr Joseph Dunn (aka Daddy Dunn) arrived at the chapel in Friargate in 1776. He was a former Jesuit who decided not to re-join the Society after its restoration, but continued to work with Jesuits and was instrumental in the building of St Wilfrid’s.

In 1878, a new sodality chapel and confessionals were added, and the inside of the church was remodelled to make it grander. Some years later stone cladding as well as terra-cotta and stone carvings were added to the exterior and European marbles attached to the interior walls and columns.

Suppression of the Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus was suppressed on the orders of Pope Clement XIV on 21 July 1773, and did not exist as an organisation until it was re-formed by Pope Pius VII.  During this period, ex-Jesuits found employment in a variety of ways, including as chaplains, priests, academics, librarians, writers and poets. Some also joined societies which were dedicated to keeping the Jesuit spirit alive. One of the largest of these was the Society of the Faith of Jesus, also known as the Paccanists after their founder Niccolo Paccanari, which some ex-Jesuits joined. Members of this society used the postnomial letters SFJ, in place of the SJ they would have used as Jesuits.  

Charles Forrester was a Jesuit who joined the French Province in 1759, but moved to the English Province soon afterwards, and spent most of the rest of his life in England. He worked as chaplain to aristocratic English Catholic families during the Suppression, including Lady Arundell at Wardour Castle. He was a member of the Society of the Faith of Jesus, as can be seen from the letters SFJ he wrote after his name when he inscribed his books.

Arrival of Jesuit teachers and pupils at Stonyhurst

The College that had been set up at St Omers first moved to Bruges in 1762 and then Liege in 1773, before arriving at Stonyhurst in 1794.

The buildings had been given for the College’s use by Thomas Weld, a former pupil. On arrival they found them in a state of disrepair and built a temporary building to house the boys. This building still is in use, and is known as ‘The Shirk’. The College continued to expand, and new buildings were added throughout the 19^th century, including the Boys’ Chapel, the Academy Room, and the South Front. Stonyhurst was notable for its scientific teaching, particularly astronomy, with its own observatory from 1838, which became one of the 5 founding weather stations for the Met Office in 1854.

In the 20^th century the College expanded and the New Wing was built in the 1960s. By the end of the 1980s it had a new indoor swimming pool, squash courts, gym and had undergone considerable refurbishment.

The last Jesuit headmaster was Michael Bossy, with the first lay headmaster, Giles Mercer appointed in 1986.  

Girls were admitted on the same basis as boys from September 1999, having been admitted to the Junior School, St Mary’s Hall, in 1997 - although the College had been educating some girls for 50 years before that.

Restoration of the English Province

The English Province of the Jesuits was restored a decade earlier than most European Provinces.  This was partly due to the fact the Jesuits’ existence in Britain had never had any official sanction, so it was easier for the Society to bring itself back into existence here. 

Following the suppression of the Society in 1773, Catherine the Great of Russia had insisted that the Jesuit houses in her realm should remain, so the Society was never suppressed there. In 1802, a group of English and Welsh Jesuits gained permission to join the Russian Jesuits, and re-form the English Province in secret. On 3 March 1803 a group of 35 English Jesuits renewed their vows at Stonyhurst under Marmaduke Stone SJ, first Provincial of the restored English Province.

Later that year, on 26 September 1803, Charles Plowden SJ opened a noviciate at Hodder Place, Stonyhurst.

Foundation of Mount St Mary’s College, Spinkhill, Derbyshire

Mount St Mary’s College was established by Randall Lythgoe SJ and welcomed its first pupils on 17 September 1842. The formal establishment of the College represented a continuation of earlier Jesuit educational activity in the area dating back to 1620.

According to a prospectus published around 1843, the school aimed to provide a ‘classical and commercial education’ for young men: 

This House of Education, situated in a healthy and picturesque part of Derbyshire, was opened with a view of providing a liberal course of Education, on terms sufficiently economical to meet the wishes of parents having large families or limited resources.

John Young of Allerton had the distinction of being the first pupil to enrol at the Mount. Young went on to join the Society of Jesus, entering the novitiate in September 1847. It is thought that at one stage the Mount provided the English Province with three-fifths of its priests. After his ordination in 1858 Young spent some years engaged in missionary work in Barbados before returning to England. He was present at the Golden Jubilee celebrations held at the Mount in September 1892. 

Despite its modest beginnings, the College rapidly grew in size and reputation. Barlborough Hall School was opened as a preparatory school to the Mount on 2 May 1939 and in the 1970s the College became coeducational.

Foundation of St Francis Xavier College, Liverpool

Francis Lythgoe SJ welcomed the first pupils to St Francis Xavier College in Soho Street, Liverpool on 27 October 1842. In the same year the foundation stone was laid in Salisbury Street, Liverpool for St Francis Xavier Church. This was designed by Joseph John Scoles and opened on 4 December 1848.

The College soon moved and shared the site with the church, and by 1856 it had its own building next to the Presbytery. This was soon outgrown and in 1877 a new College was built on a nearby site at 6 Salisbury Street, designed by Henry Clutton, with input from Bernard Vaughan SJ.

In 1961 the College moved to a site in Woolton and in 1974 the Jesuits transferred the administration of the school to the Brothers of Christian Schools.

The English Governor of Malta invited the Jesuits to open a College on the island, but insisted that only Jesuits who were British born subjects were to be employed in such an endeavour. The College of St Paul’s, a boarding school, was opened in 1845 at Notabile, Malta and the English Jesuit George Connell was the first Rector of the College. The College was relatively short lived closing in 1855.

Another college was opened in 1877. St Ignatius College at St Julian’s flourished, but due to external troubles it too closed, in 1907.

St Beuno’s was founded as a place for young Jesuits to study Theology, a crucial part of their Formation, the 12-year period of training necessary for all Jesuit Fathers.  Located in a remote part of North Wales, it was felt to be a healthy place, far from the typhoid and cholera epidemics then regularly sweeping through the cities.

St Beuno’s remained a centre for Theology until 1926, when the Theology faculty moved to the newly-acquired Heythrop in Oxfordshire. St Beuno’s then became the location for the Jesuit Tertianship, the final year of Jesuit training. It also served as the Province Infirmary for the older Jesuits.

In the 1970s there was a revival of the Spiritual Exercises for the Jesuits and a rediscovery of the individually guided retreats and much of this work took place at St Beuno’s. So, as the retreat work expanded and the tertianship relocated to Ireland in 1980 the house was dedicated to retreats and spirituality work, which it still does today.

In 1849, the Church of the Immaculate Conception at Farm Street opened. Its location at the heart of London and close to the Jesuit Curia at Hill Street and then Mount Street meant that Farm St Church quickly attracted national prominence. Preachers such as Bernard Vaughan SJ drew large crowds and acres of newspaper commentary. In the 20^th century it became well known for receiving converts to Roman Catholicism as well as fostering a community of famous writers.

In 1966 Farm Street became a parish and marriages and baptisms could be celebrated there. Iit is still a popular place for weddings to take place.

Jesuit Mission to Guyana

Jesuit Fathers James Etheridge, Aloysius Emiliani and Clement Negri arrived in Georgetown in what was then British Guiana to establish a Jesuit mission there, the Guyana mission having been entrusted to the English Jesuits by Pope Pius IX. Individual Jesuits had attempted missionary work in the territory in the late 18^th century, however these individual endeavours did not lead to the establishment of a Jesuit mission.

Under Etheridge's leadership, new churches were opened in Georgetown and along the coast at Hague, Victoria, Henrietta, Buxton, Beterverwagting, Meadow Bank and Leguan. A Catholic grammar school, later to be known as St Stanislaus College, was opened in 1866 in Georgetown. Etheridge also oversaw the building of the first cathedral in Georgetown, which formally opened in 1874.

Away from Georgetown the Jesuits established or revived mission stations in the interior towards the border with Brazil and in the North West towards the border with Venezuela. In 1896, the Jesuits began working in the North West district and opened a church at Morawhanna. The Takutu mission in the Rupununi was established in 1909 under Cuthbert Cary-Elwes SJ. Carey-Elwes' mission field extended from the River Ireng among the Patamonia Indians to the River Rupununi among the Wapishanas, which he nearly always traversed on foot. Due to ill health, Carey-Elwes gave up his post in 1923.

A mission was established at Sand Creek in the South Rupununi in 1949 and at Kurukabaru in the Pakairama Mountains in 1956.

The Guyana region has now joined the Caribbean Province.

Foundation of Sacred Heart Jesuit Church, Edinburgh

The Jesuits were invited to come to Edinburgh by Bishop Gillis and a temporary church was opened in Grassmarket on the feast of St Ignatius 31 July 1859 dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That day the foundation stone for the church of the Sacred Heart in Lauriston Street was laid. On 8 July 1860 the first service was celebrated in the new church by the Jesuit Provincial, Thomas Seed, and Bishop Gillis preached. Richard Vaughan SJ was the architect.

Beaumont College opened

The Jesuits purchased an estate in Old Windsor, Berkshire, in 1854 and used this for their novices for seven years until the noviciate was moved to Roehampton. 

The decision was then made to use the buildings and site at Old Windsor for a Catholic boarding school for boys. St Stanislaus College, Beaumont, opened in 1861, and educated Catholic boys from Britain and around the world until it closed in 1967.

St John's Beaumont was opened on 25 September 1888 initially as the preparatory school for Beaumont College and was purpose-built to accommodate 60 boys aged between 7 and 13. The school was named after St John Berchmans, a Dutch Jesuit who was canonised in 1888. The school has expanded and it now accommodates over 300 pupils.

The Month, a monthly publication originally founded by Venerable Frances Margaret Taylor (1832-1900) in 1864, was taken over by the British Jesuits in summer 1865 and continued to be operated by them until its closure in 2001.

The Month was a review magazine, and in the 1860s and 1870s published high quality writing by well known authors. John Henry Newman’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ was first published there. After a period of decline it entered a second sparkling phase in the mid 20^th century under the editorship of Philip Caraman SJ, when it published works by Eveyln Waugh, Graham Greene, Edith Sitwell, Muriel Spark and Thomas Merton.  

Opening of St Aloysius College, Glasgow

The Jesuits were asked to run a parish and establish a school for boys in Glasgow in 1859. That year they took over the running of the parish of St Joseph in North Woodside Roard. In the 1860s, the Society bought land in the Garnethill district and a school was opened in September 1866 on Dalhousie Street. The College became fully independent during the 1970s and in 1979 took the decision to accept girls.

On 4 October 1908 the memorial stone was laid in the new St Aloysius church and the solemn opening took place on 6 February 1910.

Gerard Manley Hopkins entered the Society of Jesus

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) entered the Society on 7 September 1868. He made his final vows in 1882.

Now seen as a ground-breaking poet whose innovative and beautiful poetry foreshadowed 20^th century modernist poets including T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, his work was almost unknown during his lifetime. It only gained recognition after his friend Robert Bridges, who later became Poet Laureate, arranged for the publication of a small selection of Hopkins’ work in 1918.

In 1970 a memorial was dedicated to his memory in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey on the centenary of the 'Wreck of the Deutschland' his most famous poem.

The English Province of the Society of Jesus was approached by Bishop Ricards in 1875 to run a Catholic school (St Aidan's College) in Grahamstown in South Africa. The College and subsequent Jesuit missions formed the first foundations of the Zambezi Mission.

In addition to St Aidan's College, the Jesuits established missions at Graaff-Reinet (1875-1889), Dunbrody (1882-1934), Vleischfontein (1884-1894) and Keilands (1886-1908). These stations were intended to be staging posts to support Jesuits heading north to the Zambesi Mission. By 1934 the last of these mission stations, Dunbrody, was closed. The Jesuits continued to run St Aidan's College until its closure in 1973.

The 1970s marked a change of direction for the Society in South Africa. With the closure of St Aidan's there was a conscious effort to create a South African apostolate and increased recognition that the Jesuits in South Africa no longer simply provided support for those in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). A community was established in Johannesburg in the early 1970s and around the same time the Jesuits assumed responsibility of their first parish in the city.

South Africa remained a region of the English Province until 2016. In March 2021, a Province of Southern Africa was set up incorporating the former Zambezi Mission and South Africa.

The first Jesuits set out north from Grahamstown having been given the responsibility for the Zambezi Mission which covered all of Zimbabwe, most of Zambia and some of Mozambique. Several expeditions were undertaken by the first Jesuits travelling hundreds of kilometres by ox-waggon seeking permission to open mission stations. Initially the mission was international in personnel and not the responsibility of any one Province. In 1893, the Upper Zambesi Mission was handed over to the English Province.

In 1887, the Jesuits opened Empandeni mission near Plumtree, Zimbabwe, on a tract of land granted by Chief Lobengula of the Ndebele with English Jesuit Peter Prestage in charge. Following a temporary withdrawal of the Jesuits in Zimbabwe, Prestage returned to Empandeni in 1890. During the 1920s the mission established four out-stations at Mkaya, Silima, Kwite and Mhlotshana, but in 1930 the administration of the area was transferred to the Marianhill Missionaries.

In 1892, the first surviving mission station at Chishawasha was founded. There a both academic and trade school initially for boys only, admitting girls from 1898, was started in 1893. Over the years the Jesuits have developed other schools in the Chishawasha Valley including St Ignatius College, which was established in 1962 after the Jesuits realised the need to educate marginalised black students challenged by the policies of the racist regime.

St George’s College was founded in Bulawayo in 1896 and the first English Jesuit, Thomas Gardner, joined the staff there in 1902. Due to the need for a larger school it relocated to Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe) in 1924 and the principal builder of the new school was John Conway SJ. Significantly the College admitted its first black student in 1964 whilst the then Southern Rhodesian government schools were still segregated.

A Jesuit presence at Musami, about 60 miles northeast of Salisbury, began in 1923. It was at Musami that four Jesuits and three Dominican sisters were murdered on 6 February 1977. Another English Jesuit, Desmond Donovan, was killed while visiting the outskirts of Makumbi Mission on 15 January 1978.

Ted Rogers SJ set up St Peter’s Kubatana in 1964 as a ‘community’ secondary school. The Jesuits retired from responsibility of this school in the late 1990s. Rogers also set up a training and research centre for social workers.

In 1978, the Superior General created the Zimbabwe Vice-Province and in March 2021 a Province of Southern Africa was set up incorporating the former Zambesi Mission and South Africa.

Opening of the Church of the Sacred Heart, Wimbledon

The first Mass celebrated at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Wimbledon was on 17 June 1887, the feast of the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart parish was run by the Society of Jesus from 1887 until January 2014 when control was formally handed to the secular clergy of the Archdiocese of Southwark.

Prior to the opening of the Sacred Heart, the Jesuits had for some years served the Catholic population of Wimbledon from their base in Roehampton, just across Wimbledon Common.

In 1887 the English Jesuit Provincial, Edward Purbrick, formally accepted control of the mission at Wimbledon from the Bishop of Southwark and in so doing secured an agreement that the Society of Jesus could establish a school in the area. The site of the first Jesuit school in Wimbledon was in the parlour of the presbytery at 3 Cranbrook Road with just two pupils (the Lloyd brothers) initially accepted on 18 January 1892. James Nicholson SJ was the first headmaster. The Jesuit school was housed at several other temporary locations in 1892. Towards the end of 1892 John Clayton SJ, then Provincial, sanctioned the purchase of Wimbledon School on Edge Hill. The Jesuits moved to this new site in 1893 with a cohort of 23 pupils.

In 1933 Donhead Lodge, a large house just across the road from the College, was purchased to establish a preparatory school for the College.

Up until the start of the Second World War Wimbledon College had been an independent fee-paying school. Under the headmastership of John Sinnott SJ (1937-1950), the College was granted aided school status and school fees were abolished. In 1948 the College became an aided grammar school. Under the headmastership of Robert Carty SJ, Wimbledon College again changed its status in 1968 to a voluntary aided comprehensive high school. The College has maintained this status into the 21^st century.

The first lay headmaster, Mr Adrian Laing, was appointed in 2011. Along with other Jesuit schools in the United Kingdom, Wimbledon College is supported and advised by the Jesuit Institute.

The Jesuits were the first Catholics to open a Hall in Oxford in 1896 as following a University statute in 1882 private halls could be opened by any graduates of the University over the age of 28. The first master was Richard Frederick Clarke SJ, a graduate and Fellow of St John’s College, who converted to Catholicism in 1869 before entering the Society in 1871.

Initially, Campion Hall settled in 11 St Giles, which was leased from the Master of Pembroke, and it thus became possible for Jesuits to study for an Oxford degree. 

In 1918, the University created Permanent Private Hall status which enabled private halls to exist on a more permanent basis, regardless of who was Master and the Hall was formally Campion Hall from then on. The 1882 statute had required private halls to take the name of the licensed master, which resulted in the Hall being initially called Clarke’s Hall and then Pope’s and then Plater’s, although members had always called their house Campion Hall.

Owing to the expiration of its lease in its current premises on St Giles, and the limitations of the site there for development, the Hall moved to brand new premises in Brewer Street designed by Edwin Lutyens (also cleverly incorporating an existing historic building at the request of the Oxford Preservation Society) and opened on 26 June 1936 by the Duke of Alba.

The Hall opened originally for the benefit of Jesuit undergraduates but is now home to a thriving international community of graduate students, Fellows, and staff from diverse backgrounds and faiths.

The first Jesuit retreat house was established at Compstall Hall. Hugely popular, with primarily northern working men, it was named after St Joseph. It became too small and couldn’t keep up with the retreat applications. So, in 1909, this was transferred to Oakwood, in the neighbouring village of Romily in Cheshire. In 1923, Director George Pollen SJ and the Provincial, William Bodkin SJ, considered Rainhill House a much more suitable option than Oakwood. Not far from Rainhill station, it was on the main line from the Exchange Station in Manchester to Liverpool Lime Street. On 27 April 1923 the Jesuits took possession of what then became known as Loyola Hall, Rainhill. This retreat house operated until 2014.

Residential retreats were also offered at Campion House, Osterley (1915-1919 and again during WWII); Craighead Spirituality Centre, Glasgow (1916- 1999, replaced by a non-residential Ignatian Spirituality Centre which is still in existence); Corby Hall, Sunderland (1932-1973); St Gabriel’s, Harbourne (1938-1977) and at St Beuno’s, St Asaph (from the 1970s).

1914 saw the start of the First World War during which 79 Jesuits of the British Province served as military chaplains, 5 of whom were killed on active service. Most of the English Jesuit chaplains were demobilised between 1919 and 1920, and many received awards in recognition for their services during the War. Some of these medals survive in the Jesuits in Britain Archives, including the 1914-1915 Star, British War Medal (1914-18), and the Allied Victory Medal awarded to John Luck. Several of the chaplains, including Daniel Hughes SJ, Edward Colley SJ and John Stratton SJ, were awarded the Military Cross, which was granted in recognition of acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy.

Campion House, Osterley, in the London Borough of Hounslow, began as a retreat house in 1911 and Edmund Lester SJ was appointed Superior in 1915. He realised that there would be a surge of men wanting to become priests after the war was over and in 1919 opened up as a college, initially for former soldiers who found they had vocations. Lester aimed to provide sufficient education to these men to allow them to enter a seminary. It was hugely popular, and expanded rapidly. The 'Young Priests', as the students were known, were taught Latin, French, Greek, Mathematics and Public Speaking, and were given a cultural education which included classical music concerts and trips to the theatre in London. They also maintained the garden, which was seen as a practical and a spiritual exercise.

Lester died in 1934 and in 1935 Clement Tigar SJ became Superior of Campion House.  Student numbers expanded still more, with another surge after the end of the Second World War, and a series of building works were undertaken to accommodate the larger numbers of students, first enlarging the kitchen and dining room and culminating in a new student block for 150, begun in 1961 and completed in 1963. In 1964 the new chapel was started. Tigar expanded the gardening operation, with Campion House remaining largely self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit and honey.

In the early 1960s about 160 students were resident at Osterley, but numbers had fallen by the 1970s, so Campion House started to be used for other purposes alongside the students. Refugees from conflicts in Vietnam and later in Eritrea and Kosovo were housed there. Campion House closed in 2004.

The Jesuit Charles Dominic Plater was one of the founding members of the Catholic Social Guild (CSG) which was set up in September 1909 in Manchester. A growth in Catholic interest in social questions in the early 20^th century had resulted from Pope Leo XIII encyclical Rerum Novarum issued in May 1891. Plater had also envisioned a Catholic college where working men and women could study the Church's teaching at an academic level so that they could return home and provide leadership in their workplaces and in local movements for social reform.

In 1922, Leo O’Hea with the CSG founded the Catholic Worker’s College (it was renamed Plater College in 1965) in Oxford in Plater’s memory. O’Hea was its first Principal. He was also active in fostering international contacts with leaders of Catholic social action in Europe, supporting League of Nations and other initiatives for peace, and combating Fascism and Communism. The College’s next two Principals were also Jesuits: Charles Pridgeon and Charles Waterhouse.

Plater College offered further education with an emphasis on Catholic social teaching to students who had vocational qualifications, those who had entered employment directly from school or some who had missed other educational opportunities.

It closed in July 2005 and the Plater College Archives were deposited in the British Jesuit Archives.

The Jesuit doing their philosophy studies at St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst, and those doing theological studies at St Beuno's moved to Heythrop Hall in Oxfordshire. In 1964, the college was raised to the status of a Pontifical Athenaeum, and was open for non Jesuits to attend as well. Heythrop College remained at Heythrop until 1970 when it moved to London. 

From 1971 until 2018 Heythrop was a constituent college of the University of London located in Kensington Square offering degree course in philosophy and theology. Heythrop College closed in 2018 and its archives were transferred to the British Jesuit Archives.

The significant Heythrop Library collection is still in existence, based at Mount Street.

Roughly 100 Jesuits belonging to the then English Province of the Society of Jesus served as chaplains in the Second World War in the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force between 1939 and 1945. The Jesuits who remained in Great Britain faced the challenges of air raids and food rationing.

The Battle of Britain was fought between July and October 1940 with the German Air Force waging an air campaign against the UK. The aim was to achieve air superiority. The damage caused by air-raids included Farm Street Church as well as Manresa House, Roehampton. In fact, a Junior was killed when a bomb struck Manresa.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Jesuit Missions was established. However, British Jesuits have worked on “the missions” in Guyana and in Southern Africa for over 150 years. In the 1960s, an office was established to assist Jesuit missionaries (working abroad). The house in Wimbledon became a “home from home” for generations of Jesuits returning to Britain for periods of rest and recuperation. In recent years, Jesuit Missions has evolved from being an office which supports British Jesuits on the missions to an organisation that supports the universal mission of the Jesuits globally. That mission, affirmed in successive General Congregations, is to serve the faith through the promotion of justice and reconciliation.

The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) was set up on 14 November 1980 by Superior General Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ. JRS is an international Catholic organisation at work in over 50 countries around the world with a mission to accompany, serve and advocate for the rights of refugees and forced migrants.

In 1993, the first formal office of JRS UK was set up in Brixton, but British Jesuits had been involved with various projects assisting refugees before this. Bernard Elliot SJ had been working with refugees in England since 1979 and refugees were hosted at Campion House Osterley (a pre-seminary college) in the 1970s.

Although there was a thriving mission in Wales in the 1620s, the Province created in 1623 was named the English Province. Scotland had their own dedicated mission predating the first arrival of Jesuits in England, but this did not survive the suppression of the Society. It was in the 1850s that the English Province extended their mission to include Scotland. It took until 1985, however, for the Province to be renamed the British Province.

The British Jesuit Peter Scally created a daily podcast to allow commuters a quick burst of prayer using Ignatian prayer techniques. This was originally designed as a trial for Lent, but the podcast took off. In 2014, it was launched as an app and gradually other language versions are being developed.

The Edinburgh Jesuit Centre, which offers courses, events and retreats in theology, spirituality, social justice and adult faith formation was also begun in 2006.

Launch of Thinking Faith

The online journal Thinking Faith has been publishing articles that offer a faith-based perspective on contemporary issues and resources about the Catholic tradition. There are also reviews of the latest film and book releases.

The British Jesuits opened a research institute inspired by Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si: On the Care for Our Common Home. The institute through its partnerships conducts multidisciplinary research on the most pressing ecological and social issues of our day. The institute is based at Campion Hall, Oxford.