Biography | Arturo Sosa — Theology Finished on Piazza della Pilotta

The philosophy licence was Venezuelan.

The theology that made him a priest was Roman.

After the 1972 licentiate at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, Sosa was sent to the Collegio del Gesu and to the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Jesuit athenaeum on Piazza della Pilotta, a short walk from the Trevi fountain and from the mother church of the Society.

He studied there between 1974 and 1977.

The official Jesuit biographies record a bachelor's degree in theology from this university.

On 30 July 1977 he was ordained a priest.

The sources do not pin the chapel of the ordination, so this memory stays with the faculty that issued the degree.

The Gregorian facade a visitor sees today is the same block he walked into as a scholastic in his mid-twenties.

Rome was not yet a posting. It was formation.

He went home to the Venezuelan social apostolate, to Centro Gumilla, and to a political-science doctorate at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

The later Roman jobs — counsellor to Adolfo Nicolas from 2008, Delegate for the interprovincial houses from 2014 — returned him to a city he already knew from this slope.

A visitor who wants the priest, not the general, stands on Piazza della Pilotta.

Photo: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana facade, Milala 1974, CC BY-SA 3.0, 23 November 2006, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Arturo Sosa, Irekia, CC BY 2.0, 12 January 2017.