The 22nd General Of The Society Of Jesus: Fr. Peter Beckx, S.J. He Shared His Birth Place With St. John Berchmans, S.J.

THE LATE GENERAL OF THE JESUITS.

IN the first week of the month that is just over, on the fourth day of March, in this year of our Lord, 1887, Father Peter Beckx, twenty- second General of the Society of Jesus, died at Rome. Two months ago he had completed the ninety-second year of his age. On the 8th of February, 1795, he was born of religious and respectable parents, John Beckx and Elizabeth Theynskens, at a village of Brabant, called Sichem, close to Diest, the birthplace of Blessed John Berchmans, the Aloysius of Belgium.

The example and the prayers of his youthful compatriot, born near the same spot almost exactly two centuries before, may have had some influence in determining the Belgian lad's vocation; but he did not enter the Society till a riper age than Berchmans had attained when he quitted it for the society of Jesus in heaven.

But probably his pious mother has more to do with it than any saint; and at any rate to his parents belong the credit of having secured for their boy, in those disturbed and revolutionary times, a Christian and even an ecclesiastical training.

Peter's first instructor was his uncle and probably his godfathe'r Peter Theynskens; and, after his uncle's death, he went to Testelt, where his teacher, John Peeters, is said to have handled both ferule and plough, tilling his own small farm while in charge of the village school. I do not know how many miles as the crow flies (or as soldiers fly), Testelt is distant from Mont St. Jean, or whether John Peelers' pupils were disturbed at their lessons by the cannonading at Waterloo. Three months after that "king-making victory," on the 15th of September, 1815, Peter Beckx entered the episcopal seminary of Malines, where one of his professors was Engelbert Sterckx, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of that See.

He was ordained priest on the 7th of March, 1819, and so in the last week of his life he may have been looking forward to the celebration of the sixty-eighth anniversary of his first Mass. The week after his ordination he was appointed curate at TTccle, a parish in the neighbourhood of Brussels ; but before the end of the year he had entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Hildesheim in Hanover, where his master in the spiritual life was Father Cornelius Van Everbroeck, who was afterwards for many years at Rome, Theologian to the Sacred Penitentiary.

After his two years' novice- ship, which began on the 29th of October, 1819, he was allowed some time to revise his philosophical and theological studies before being appointed lecturer on Canon Law in the Seminary of Hildesheim in 1823.

On the 23rd of March, 1826, he was appointed Superior of the Jesuits at Koethen. About this time Frederick Ferdinand, Duke of Anhalt-Koethen, and his wife Julia, sister to the King of Prussia, became Catholics, and Father Beckx was selected as their chaplain— a duty which he continued to discharge when the Duke died and his widow removed to Vienna.

Here Father Beckx found a larger field for his zeal for the salvation of souls; but, after the death of the Duchess—which seems to have occurred some fifteen years later—he « as recalled to his native Belgium to be secretary to the Belgian Provincial (March 23, 1849), and Rector of the College of Louvain from October the 10th, 1850.

His connection, however, with Vienna was to be renewed. The Imperial decrees against the Society in Austria had just been repealed, and the Jesuits were allowed to return to the houses from which the Revolution had driven them.

Of the re-established Province of Austria Father Beckx was named Provincial on the 8th of September, 1852; but before his first year of Office was over, on July 2nd, 1853, he was elected General of the Order, the twenty-first successor of its Founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the twenty-second of the long line that stretches back to that Feast of the Assumption, 1534, when in the chapel of Montmartre the seven First Jesuits offered their vows to God.

Dividing the number of years since then by twenty-two, the average length of the Jesuit Generalship is found to be about sixteen years—a very respectable average for such an office. Father Beckx was destined to go far beyond this average.

With the exception of the fifth General, the famous Claudius Aquaviva, he filled the office for a longer term of years than any other during the three centuries and a-half; and he only wanted two or three months to complete the thirty-four years of Father Claudius.

He had, however, been relieved from the responsibilities of his position since September 24, 1883, when Father Antony Anderledy was appointed his vicar and successor. The new General is a Swiss, and the four immediate predecessors of the Belgian Father Beckx were a Pole, an Austrian, an Italian, and a Dutchman, the last of these being Father Eoothaan, the only General of the Society who ever visited Ireland. The troubled years through which France and Italy especially have passed afforded to the Superior of the Jesuit Fathers ample scope for the exercise of fortitude, prudence, and many other virtues ; and the venerable man who has just gone to his reward proved himself equal to the difficult crisis.

As he had the same birthplace as Blessed John Berchmans, so, after a life more than four times as long, he died where Berchmans had died—in Bome; and he died kissing the very crucifix which Saint Aloysius's dying hands had clasped. After so many labours and so many anxieties continued so long, may he rest in peace—in loco refrigerii, liicis, et pads.

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