In memoriam
Włodzimierz Halka Ledóchowski (7 October 1866 – 13 December 1942) was a Polish Catholic priest who served as the 26th superior general of the Society of Jesus from 11 February 1915 until his death. Prior to taking holy orders, he was briefly a page to Empress Elizabeth.
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Włodzimierz Halka Ledóchowski (7 October 1866 – 13 December 1942) was a Polish Catholic priest who served as the 26th superior general of the Society of Jesus from 11 February 1915 until his death. Prior to taking holy orders, he was briefly a page to Empress Elizabeth.
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Early life He was one of nine children of Count Antoni Halka Ledóchowski and the Swiss Countess Joséphine née Salis-Zizers. He was born in a manor house built by his father in Loosdorf, near St. Pölten, Lower Austria. His uncle was Mieczysław Cardinal Halka-Ledóchowski, and two of his sisters entered the religious life and have become known as Saint Maria Ursula of Jesus and Blessed Maria Teresa Ledóchowska. His brother, Ignacy Kazimierz Ledóchowski, was a general in the Polish Army. Ledóchowski studied first at the Theresianum, in Vienna, and was for a time a page to Empress Elizabeth. He went on to study law at the Jagellonian University in Kraków. He discerned a religious vocation and turned to studies for the priesthood. While attending the Gregorian University, in Rome, he applied to join the Jesuits and entered the Society of Jesus in 1889. Five years later, he was ordained a priest. At first, he took to writing, but he was soon made Superior of the Jesuit house in Kraków and then Rector of the College. He became the Polish Vice-Provincial in 1901 and Provincial of Southern Poland in 1902. From 1906 to February 1915, he was an assistant in the…
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Superior-General of the Jesuits After the death of Franz Xavier Wernz in August 1914, 49-year-old Ledóchowski became a candidate for the leadership of his order. He was elected the 26th General of the Society on 11 February 1915 on the second ballot. Despite the serial upheavals of the First World War, the Second World War and the economic Depression of the 1930s, the Society increased in number during Ledóchowski's term of office. He called the 27th General Congregation to take place at the Germanico to acquaint the Society with the new code of canon law (published in 1917) and to bring the Jesuit Constitution into line with it. He called another Congregation (the 28th) between 12 March and 9 May 1937 for the purpose of appointing a vicar general, as with the effects of age, he sought competent assistance. He established the Pontifical Oriental Institute and the Pontifical Russian College and the Institutum Biblicum of the Gregorian University. He extracted a certain emancipation for the Society after the Concordat between the Church and the Italian government was ratified. Property was returned to the Society, making it possible for the Jesuits to build a new Gregorian University building, transferring from the…
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Divided opinions According to David Kertzer's 2014 book The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, during the rise of fascism in Italy under Benito Mussolini, Ledóchowski exhibited strong anti-Semitic and pro-fascist sympathies. Kertzer writes that Ledóchowski worked to promote anti-Semitism in the Vatican and to align it with Italy's and Germany's racist and expansionist ambitionsL "The Jesuit leader [Ledochowski] made no secret of his enthusiasm for the Fascist regime. From the time when Mussolini came to power, he [Ledochowski] had done what he could to stamp out Church opposition to the Duce". Kertzer further states that "in early 1936, the Italian ambassador told Ledochowski that Mussolini wanted America [the US Jesuit magazine] anti-Fascist editor fired and a pro-Fascist editor put in his place.... Ledochowski accommodated him readily.... Soon a new editor was in place, suitably enthusiastic about the Fascist cause". Furthermore, "Pignatti [the Italian ambassador] remarked that Italy's enemies were the Church's enemies. Ledochowski agreed. The attacks on Mussolini for waging war in Ethiopia, he [Ledochowski] replied were simply a 'pretext from which international Judaism is profiting in order to advance its attack on western civilization'". Kertzer writes that there…
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Support for Allied resistance According to the Jesuit historian Vincent A. Lapomarda, there was "no doubt" about Ledóchowski's concern to thwart Nazi Germany in Europe once it had invaded Poland: "Even if he had at one time entertained, as alleged by one historian, the conception of a union of a Catholic bloc in Europe against the Communists in the East and the Protestants in the West, events had dramatically altered that vision". Ledóchowski accurately surmised Adolf Hitler's perfidious nature; predicted the Hitler-Stalin Pact; used the Jesuit-run Vatican Radio service to broadcast condemnations of Nazi crimes in Poland, which led to protests by the German government; and assisted underground resistance movements in occupied Europe. The Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland was particularly severe, and Lapomarda notes that Ledóchowski helped "stiffen the general attitude of the Jesuits against the Nazis"; helped Vatican Radio, which was run by the Jesuit Filippo Soccorsi; and spoke out against Nazi oppression, particularly with regard to Poland, and against Vichy France's anti-Semitism.
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Death Ledóchowski died in Rome on 13 December 1942, aged 76. After his funeral in the Church of the Gesù, his remains were interred in the Society's mausoleum at Campo Verano, on the eastern edge of Rome.
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Appraisal Nicholas Murray Butler, who met Ledóchowski in 1930, later wrote that "in Rome I was told that Father Ledóchowski would rank as one of the two or three greatest heads of the Jesuit Order".