Facebook Jesuits

GC 35 on Facebook.com
March 5 , 2008
Facebook: 60 million people worldwide have signed up to this “social utility” on the internet, and there were bound to be some Jesuits among them, so we sent our reporter on a search.
The number of Facebook groups in some way related to the Society of Jesus and things Ignatian is somewhere between 10 and 20, and there are countless more groups related in one way or another to Jesuit higher education institutions.
The biggest groups are predictably those most closely linked to activities of Jesuits in the real world: Products of Jesuit Education Network (671 members), Friends of America Magazine (264), Jesuits on Facebook (217), Friends of Jon Sobrino SJ (198) and Jesuits in Formation (142). Some popular have rather playful titles, like I Loves Me Those Jesuits (892) and If I was a priest, it would have to be a Jesuit (137). And then there are the niche-groups, like The Legacy of Bernard Lonergan SJ (27). Of course, there is also the official “fan group” The Jesuits (26 members) as well as the The Saint Ignatius Fan Club (256 members!). P. Adolfo Nicolas SJ is of course represented an already has 20 fans on Facebook only a month after his election. By far the most active group of all is “Jesuits in Formation” with almost daily updates from the General Congregation. Unlike the official website of the Congregation, with its full-time staff members, here is a group of people (probably just one or two) who in their spare time ‘walk the internet’ looking for material that could be of interest to the rest of those “Jesuits in Formation” around the world. They do this in three languages, paying attention to keep coverage about equal for French, Spanish and English (and sometimes Portuguese and Italian). What is striking is the geographical diversity of the members of this group, given that Facebook still is very much dominated by US citizens: there are Western and Eastern Europeans, Africans (Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi), Latin Americans (many Colombians and Chileans) and Jesuits from most other continents. Have you seen beautiful video-taped interview with Father Adolfo Nicolás? The staff of the GC35 website came across it in the “Jesuits in Formation” group, where a member from Colombia had placed it the night before. A few hours later, the news was out on www.sjweb.info/35 under the title “Father General is on YouTube!”. On YouTube.com, the website where the video can be found, it has been watched by over 11,000 people around the world since it was placed there on 24th January and surely inspired hearts and minds.

Link (here)