The Mexican Jesuits Tried To Pirate Brother Kamel

Father Horacio de la Costa’s book The Jesuits in the Philippines on page 440 mentions the additional difficulty that those men found in Mexico and the Philippines. He quotes a letter by Father Adam Kahl (hispanized as Adam Kaller).

Two of the Bohemian Jesuits were well-known. One was Father Pablo Clein (Paulus Klein), rector of the Jesuit college in Manila, and the spiritual director and protector of Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, knowns as the foundress of the RVM Sisters. Father Clein should really be given the credit, at least as co-founder, but the RVM refuse to recognize that fact. He was born in Eger, Bohemia, 1652, and arrived in the Philippines as a priest in 1678. Father de la Costa did not know where and when he died.

More famous was the lay brother Jorge Camel (George Kamel), born in Brun, Moravia, 1661. He arrived in Manila 1687 and died in Manila 1706. He was a botanist and as infirmarian in the Jesuit college, he discovered medical properties in several plants. His articles written in Latin were published in London in the bulletin of the royal society. It was in his honor that the greatest botanist, Carl Linnaeus, named the camelia flower.

In Cordova, Argentina, the Jesuit church has a roof like an inverted keel. I was told that the brother who built the church had been connected with shipbuilding in Flanders.

Father de la Costa on that same page 440 mentions that the Mexican Jesuits tried to pirate Brother Kamel on the latter’s way to the Philippines. They recognized his skill as a botanist.

Link (here)