Biography | Arturo Sosa — The First Latin American General, Elected in This Aula

Adolfo Nicolas was chosen in this building in 2008.

Eight years later the same aula chose his successor.

General Congregation 36 opened with Mass at the Church of the Gesu on 2 October 2016 and took its working sessions in the General Curia on Borgo Santo Spirito, the 1927 brick headquarters that looks toward Santo Spirito in Sassia and, from the roof, the dome of St Peter's.

On 3 October the congregation accepted Nicolas's resignation.

After four days of one-to-one conversations the Society calls murmuratio, more than two hundred electors went to the aula on 14 October, sat through an hour of silence, and voted.

They elected Arturo Sosa Abascal, then 67, Delegate for the interprovincial houses and works in Rome and a counsellor since 2008.

He became the 31st Superior General and the first man born in Latin America to hold the office.

BBC, the Associated Press, and the Jesuit provinces in the United States issued the same two facts the same afternoon: Venezuelan, first from the region.

The Society then numbered a little under 17,000 men.

Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit from Argentina, received the new general in the days that followed.

The pin is the same facade already used for Nicolas's 2008 ballot.

The moment is not.

A visitor on Borgo Santo Spirito is looking at the rooms where the Society stopped being a European generalate.

Photo: Curia Generalis, Boubloub, CC BY-SA 4.0, 2 April 2023, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Arturo Sosa, Irekia, CC BY 2.0, 12 January 2017.