Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I pray over the Stone of Unction at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday, May 25. The Pope joined Bartholomew in a historic joint prayer for Christian unity at Christianity's holiest site in Jerusalem.

BREAKING NEWS FROM "THE WHITE POPE" AND FROM "THE BLACK POPE"

My Dear Sisters and Brothers:

We all continue to be greatly surprised and encouraged by the amazing leadership of Pope Francis on an almost daily basis. The latest startling and unexpected news came on his trip to the Holy Land. On Sunday Francis invited the presidents of the two rival states of Israel and The Palestine to come to his residence at the Vatican and pray with him for peace and reconciliation between their two nations. Both President Mahmoud Abbas and President Shimon Peres accepted the Pope's invitation. The date for the meeting is Friday, June 6th.

On our part, we must make it a day of prayer, too, asking the Holy Spirit to overcome the antipathy of these two nations toward each other and to bring genuine reconciliation between them. We need to pray that God will do for them what they have not and cannot do for themselves namely establish a peace built on justice and forgiveness.

On another front, last Tuesday the Jesuits around the world received word by way of a letter from the Curia of the Society of Jesus in Vatican City that Father Adolfo Nicolas, SJ, the General of the Society since January 19, 2008, will be convening the Thirty-Sixth General Congregation of the Society in the final months of 2016 in order to submit his resignation as General on his having reached the age of 80 and to ask the members of the Congregation to elect a new General.

Since the founding of the Society of Jesus in 1540 there have been 30 Jesuit Generals beginning with Ignatius Loyola who was General for sixteen years till his death in 1556. Until the election of Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ in 1983, all the Generals were elected for life. That protocol no longer exists. It's interesting to note that over the span of the Society's four-hundred-and-seventy-four year history there have been 45 Popes in contrast to the Society's 30 Generals. Since the mid-16th Century Popes have worn a simple white cassock while Jesuit Generals have traditionally worn a very plain black soutane. Thus have arisen the phrases "White Pope" and "Black Pope."

One final point has to do with the thirty-year period in the Society's history when there was no General. When Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society in 1773, Father General Lorenzo Ricci, SJ was placed in the papal dungeon and died there in 1775. From that date till 1805, when Father Thaddeus Brzozowski, SJ was elected General, the large contingent of Jesuits who still existed in Catherine the Great's Russia teaching in a number of Jesuit schools were without a General.  

That segment of the Society's history, namely when they were suppressed, yet still existed in Russia, and then were restored throughout the world fully in 1814, deserves a future column in Watters' Edge. Meanwhile, as Father Nicolas indicated in his letter announcing his future resignation: " Let us ask Our Lady of the Way to place the Society with her Son in this journey of discernment that we now begin."

Gratefully in Christ,