Wlodimir Ledóchowski

Very Reverend Wlodimir (or Włodzimierz) Ledóchowski, S.J. (October 7, 1866 - December 13, 1942) was the 26th Superior-General of the Society of Jesus.

He was born on the family estate, Sitzenthal, in Loosdorf, near St. Pölten (Lower Austria), the son of Count Antoni Halka Ledóchowski. His uncle was Mieczysław Halka Ledóchowski, and his sisters included Saint Ursula Ledóchowska, and Blessed Maria Teresia Ledóchowska. His brother, Ignacy Kazimierz Ledóchowski, was a General in the Polish Army.

He studied at the Theresianum in Vienna and for a time was page to the Empress. He studied Law at the University of Kraków and then began studies for the secular priesthood. While attending the Gregorian University, he decided to become a Jesuit and entered the Society in 1889. Five years later he was ordained a Jesuit priest. At first he took to writing, but was soon made Superior of the Jesuit residence in Kraków, then, Rector of the College. He became the Polish Vice-Provincial in 1901 and Provincial of Galicia in 1902. From 1906 until February 1915 he was the German Assistant.

After the death of Franz Xavier Wernz, the 49-year-old Ledóchowski was elected the 26th General of the Society on February 11, 1915 on the second ballot.

Despite the upheaval of the First World War, the Second World War and the economic Depression of the 1930s, the Society increased during Ledóchowski's term. He called the 27th General Congregation to take place at the Germanico to acquaint the Society with the new code of Canon Law (published in 1917) and to bring the Jesuit Constitutions into line with it. He called another Congregation (the 28th)— between March 12 and May 9, 1937 — in order for the delegates to appoint a Vicar General as he was now feeling the effects of age and needed competent assistance.^{[citation needed]}

He established the Pontifical Oriental Institute and the Pontifical Russian College as well as the Institutum Biblicum of the Gregorian University. He saw a certain emancipation of the Society after the Concordat between the Church and the Italian Government was ratified. Property was returned to the Society making it possible for the Jesuits to build a new Gregorian University building transferring from the Palazzo Borgomeo on via del Seminario to Piazza Pilotta within a few paces of the Quirinal Palace. He then built the new Curia Generalis in the rione of Borgo, on property acquired from the Vatican on Borgo Santo Spirito, about a hundred meters from St. Peter's Square. The Concordat is credited with giving new life to the Society of Jesus, whose property increased with its influence and reputation.^{[citation needed]}

According to a slightly premature obituary in The New York Times, dated December 10, 1942 (three days before he actually died):

Dr Nicholas Murray Butler, who met Father Ledóchowski in 1930, wrote later that "... in Rome I was told that Father Ledóchowski would rank as one of the two or three greatest heads of the Jesuit Order", an estimate which would group him with such men as Ignatius Loyola, the first [Jesuit] general, Francisco Borgia, the third, and [Claudius] Aquaviva, the fifth.

Malachi Martin's The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (p. 221) referred to Ledóchowski as follows:

It was during the twenty-seven year Generalate of Father Wlodzimierz ... that the traditional character of the Society received the firmest stamp and clearest definition since the Generalate of Claudio Acquaviva in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One might even say that Ledóchowski insisted on fidelity to the structure of Jesuit obedience, was an almost merciless disciplinarian,and maintained a stream of instructions flowing out to the whole Society about every detail of Jesuit life and Ignatian ideals. He know exactly what Jesuits should be according to the Society’s Constitutions and traditions; and under strong hands of two quite authoritarian Popes, Pius XI and Pius XII, he reestablished the close ties that had once linked papacy and Jesuit Generalate. Ledóchowski, in fact, gave renewed meaning to that old Roman nickname of the Jesuit Father General, "the Black Pope". Just as Pius XII can be described as the last of the great Roman Popes, so Ledóchowski can be called the last of the great Roman Generals of the Jesuits. There seemed, indeed, during those years of Ledóchowski, Pope Pius XI, and Pius XII, no real limit to what both Jesuitism and overall Roman Catholicism could achieve. Even – especially, we should say – in the afterglow of Ledóchowski's long reign and into the Generalate of his successor, Belgian Jean-Baptiste Janssens, the magic power of momentum seemed to continue.

Death

Wlodimir Ledóchowski died in Rome on December 13, 1942, aged 76. After his funeral in the Church of the Gesù his remains were interred in the Society's mausoleum at Campo Verano on the eastern edge of Rome.

See also

• Ledóchowski Ledóchowski family overview
• Ursula Ledóchowska The canonized sister of Wladimir Ledóchowski
• Maria Teresia Ledóchowska The beatified sister of Wladimir Ledóchowski
• Igor Ledóchowski A present day nephew of Wladimir Ledóchowski
• Michel d'Herbigny

Preceded by Franz Xavier Wernz

Superior General of the Society of Jesus 1915–1942

Succeeded by Jean-Baptiste Janssens