Biography | Adolfo Nicolás — The Second Ballot on Borgo Santo Spirito

People treat the election of a Jesuit general as a Vatican story staged under the dome.

The vote was taken a few hundred metres away, in the General Curia on Borgo Santo Spirito.

The Thirty-Fifth General Congregation opened in that building on 7 January 2008 after Peter Hans Kolvenbach had asked to resign.

Two hundred and seventeen electors sat through a long session on 19 January.

On the second ballot they chose Adolfo Nicolás, then moderator of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania and a man who had lived in Asia for forty-three years.

Pope Benedict XVI confirmed the election the same day.

Nicolás became the thirtieth Superior General of the Society of Jesus and the twenty-ninth successor of Ignatius of Loyola.

The Society then numbered a little under twenty thousand men.

The brick curia facing Santo Spirito in Sassia has been the headquarters since it opened in 1927.

From the roof the dome of St Peter's is in plain sight; the chapel inside is dedicated to Francis Borgia.

He served from this address until 3 October 2016, when the Thirty-Sixth General Congregation accepted his resignation on grounds of health and elected Arturo Sosa.

The life term written into the Constitutions is not a lock.

Kolvenbach had already shown that a general may ask to step down, and Nicolás used the same door.

A visitor on Borgo Santo Spirito sees a 1927 facade, not a conclave hall.

The ballot that changed his title was counted in these rooms.

Photo: Curia Generalis, Boubloub, CC BY-SA 4.0, 2 April 2023, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Hannes Heinsar, CC BY-SA 3.0, 2008.