30th

The Very Reverend Adolfo Nicolás is the current Superior General of the Society of Jesus, the largest male religious order in the Roman Catholic Church. He is only the thirtieth Superior General in the order's 469-year history (St. Ignatius of Loyola being the first) and was elected to the position on January 19, 2008. Fr. Nicolás is Spanish but he has spent more than half of his 73 years in Asia, mostly in Japan but also for about ten years in Manila. The headquarters of the Jesuits is in Rome so Fr. Nicolás is now based there, but he returned to Manila for several days last week to visit the Philippine Jesuits. He gave the keynote address during the Jesuit Basic Education Congress hosted by the Ateneo de Manila University and, though I'm not involved directly in academics, I was lucky enough to have been able to attend his talk. In case any of you are interested in the "Issues and Challenges in Jesuit Education Today," a three-part video of Fr. Nicolás' talk is available here, here and here. But only if you use Internet Explorer—I use Firefox and it can't even detect what kind of plug-in is needed to watch it.