(OSV News) -- As novice master for his Jesuit province in Argentina, Father Jorge Bergoglio -- whom the world would come to know decades later as Pope Francis -- would have had a deep knowledge of the "spiritual exercises," a discernment method at the core of the Jesuit order.
In his role, he routinely led Jesuit novices through the full 30-day process that involves meditations, prayer, contemplation and silence, with the goal of growing closer to God and living the Gospel.
As the first Jesuit pope, that intimacy with the spiritual exercises shaped Pope Francis' worldview, said Carlos Aedo, executive director of the Office of Ignatian Spirituality, a ministry of the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits.
"He is a man formed by the spiritual exercises," both as recipient and leader of a spiritual exercises retreat, Aedo said of Pope Francis, who died April 21 at age 88.
"He was very aware of Ignatius' experience of encountering God in personal prayer, but also in the world," he said. "That's one of the things that have characterized Francis' years with us: That God can be found in all things, not just in the chapel, not just in the church, not just in your personal prayer. God is outside waiting for us to encounter him."
The Jesuits were founded in the 1530s by St. Ignatius of Loyola and his friends, all students at the University of Paris. The spiritual exercises, published in 1548 as a manual of spiritual disciplines, is a foundational practice for Jesuits as well as non-Jesuits practicing Ignatian spirituality. As pope, Francis would dedicate the first full week of Lent to the exercises, and would invite Vatican Curia leaders to join him.
In a 2014 address to an Italian organization dedicated to the spiritual exercises, Pope Francis said, "He who lives the exercises in a genuine way experiences attraction, is fascinated by God, and returns renewed, transfigured to ordinary life, to the ministry, to daily relations, bearing within him the fragrance of Christ."
"Francis has reminded us to discern, and how to do it well," Aedo said, pointing to the 14-part catechesis the pope gave on discernment during his Wednesday audiences in 2022. "He has reminded us that discernment is not just making the right choice or finding the best way to do something. Discernment means finding where the Spirit is leading us."
Another sign of the pope's Jesuit -- or Ignatian -- spirituality was his effort to discern the sign of the times and the way he expressed freedom.
"When you make the exercises, you learn how to be free (and) enjoy the freedom of the children of God," Aedo said.
Pope Francis' emphasis on mercy (underscored by the 2015 Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy), his devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart (the subject of his 2024 encyclical "Dilexit Nos"), and practices of poverty are also likely rooted in his Jesuit formation, said Jesuit Father Bruce Morrill, the Edward A. Malloy Chair in Roman Catholic Studies and distinguished professor of theology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
"The world was taken and enchanted, taken in, by the symbolism of his immediate assumption of office -- that he did not want to be treated like a royal figure," he said. "For us Jesuits -- for me as a Jesuit -- it spoke repeatedly what we profess about poverty" and Jesuit discernment about how to live that vow in the modern age.
Pope Francis entered the Jesuits March 11, 1958, at age 21. He was ordained a priest in 1969 and made his final profession with the Jesuits in 1973. It was during that time, in the years after the Second Vatican Council, that the Jesuits as whole reexamined their roots and particular mission, which included attention to living their vow of poverty through more modest living, Father Morrill said.
What emerged from the Jesuits' 32nd General Congregation in 1975 was a particular answer to the question: "What is it to be a Jesuit?" The response: "It is to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus as Ignatius was."
When Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro interviewed Pope Francis in September 2013, his first question was, "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?" and the pope seemed to offer a particularly Jesuit response: "I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon."
A few months before that interview, in July 2013, Pope Francis talked about his Jesuit identity with journalists on the flight back from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, noting he still considered himself a Jesuit.
"The Jesuits make a special vow of fidelity to the pope. But if the pope is a Jesuit, does he have to make a vow to the superior of the Jesuits?" he mused to them.
"I am a Jesuit in my spirituality, a spirituality involving the exercises," he said, adding, "And I think like a Jesuit."
Pope Francis' openness to new situations and to engaging new challenges in the church is a sign of his Jesuit formation, said Jesuit Father Allan Figueroa Deck, a distinguished scholar in pastoral theology and Latino studies at the Jesuit-founded Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
"One of the features of the Ignatian spiritual tradition is the cultivation of awareness, the cultivation of keeping your eyes open, because it is in the world that we experience -- that we will discover -- God, God's presence, especially the Holy Spirit," he said.
This facet of Ignatian spirituality is cultivated by a Jesuit's daily practice of the examen, an evening reflection on God's active presence in the events of one's day.
While some observers have characterized Pope Francis' Jesuit outlook as a progressive worldview, Father Deck begs to differ, describing it instead as "a mixed thing."
"It has to be, because it's trying to take us beyond how these ideologies parallel us and don't allow us to move forward," he said, pointing as an example to Pope Francis' "retrieval of the tradition of the synodal way."
Calling the Synod on Synodality Pope Francis' "signature contribution," Father Deck said the process demonstrated "both the regard that the pope has, and the church historically has had, for tradition; but tradition understood not as a dead artifact … that you put in a museum."
"You don't just return to the heritage, but you learn how to apply it in new situations," he said.
Father Deck, whose book "Francis, Bishop of Rome: The Gospel for the Third Millennium" was published by Paulist Press in 2016, said, "Francis will be remembered as having moved the church around a corner that it had to turn -- well, inspiring it to move along. And the church moves very slowly.
"So that's why he's gotten resistance, which is no secret," he said. "People resist. I think that he's been absolutely brilliant, extraordinary. Time will tell. We'll see."
