The Famed Jesuit Cardinal And World War II Heroism

Cardinal Paolo Dezza, 98; Guided the Jesuits
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: December 22, 1999
Cardinal Paolo Dezza, a traditional Jesuit scholar who was assigned by Pope John Paul II to rein in the religious order in the early 1980's, died in Rome on Friday. He was 98. The Jesuits, formally the Society of Jesus, an order founded in the 16th century, grew politically divided in the social unrest of the 1960's and 70's.

One of the first concerns of John Paul II's papacy was ridding the Roman Catholic Church of Marxist-tinted ''liberation theology'' movements in Latin America, of which Jesuits were often leading advocates.

Jesuits in the United States and Europe were also prominent in theological rifts with Rome. In 1979 the newly elected pope warned a gathering of Jesuits that their order was ''causing confusion among the Christian people and anxieties to the church.'' In 1981, as the battle between conservatives and liberals in the Jesuits intensified, the order's superior general, the Rev. Pedro Arrupe, suffered a stroke.

The Jesuits nominated the Rev. Vincent O'Keefe, an American liberal, to run the order until a successor could be found. The pope instead appointed Father Dezza, who was known as a brilliant scholar and also a traditionalist, as a special pontifical delegate to serve as the Jesuits' interim leader. The pope had attended Father Dezza's lectures when studying in Rome after World War II at the Gregorian Pontifical Institute, where Father Dezza was rector. Father Dezza was also a confessor to Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I. Despite the concerns of some Jesuits, his leadership proved deft.

In 1983 the Jesuits chose the Rev. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, a Dutch academic who had mainly worked in the Middle East, to be superior general, and tensionnbetween the Vatican and the Jesuits abated. The pope elevated Father Dezza to cardinal in 1991, even though he was 89, nine years over the age limit to vote to elect a new pope. Cardinal Dezza, who was born in Parma in 1901, began his training as a Jesuit in 1918, right after finishing high school. Ordained in 1928, he was appointed rector of the Gregorian in 1941. During World War II, he was credited with having hidden people wanted by the Nazis. Before the pope asked him to be pontifical delegate to the Jesuits, Father Dezza had held senior administrative positions in the order, including president of the commission of superior studies in 1974. On Monday the pope celebrated the cardinal's funeral Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.

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