Fr. Adolfo Nicolas new Superior General of Jesuits

(Jan. 19, 2008) A Spanish-born missionary priest working in Asia has been elected the new Superior General of the worldwide Jesuit order. Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, the moderator of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania, was elected Jesuit General on Saturday in Rome by 217 Jesuit electors during the current 35^th General Congregation of the order. The 71-year old new superior general succeeds Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, an 80-year old Dutch priest who headed the world’s largest religious order for 24 years. Fr. Nicolas thus becomes the 29th successor of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuits. Pope Benedict XVI was informed of the election of the new Jesuit General before the news was made public. Fr. Adolfo Nicolas was born on April 29, 1936, in Palencia, Spain. After entering the Jesuit novitiate of Aranjuez of the Toletana Jesuit province in 1953, he studied philosophy in Madrid. While studying theology in Tokyo, Japan, he was ordained priest in 1967. Among the posts that he held in the past are professor of systematic theology at the Jesuits’ Sophia University in Tokyo, the director of the Pastoral Institute of Manila, in the Philippines and the Provincial of the Japan Jesuit province. Besides his native Spanish, Fr. Nicolas speaks Japanese, English, French and Italian.