[196] Isa 7:10-14;Ps 24:1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Luke 1:26-38.
Hours of 20 December
Anniversary:
71st anniversary of the death of F. Francis Meier (78) d. 1961 at Chishawasha, S. Rhodesia.
Anniversary:
50th anniversary of the death of F. Stanislaus Tamkvaitis (70) d. 1982 at Harare, Zimbabwe.
Anniversary:
44th anniversary of the death of P. Patrick McNamara (65) d. 1988 at Middlesborough, England.
On this day in our Jesuit history...
1538
St. Ignatius celebrates his first Mass in the basilica of St. Mary Major, Rome, at the altar of the Holy Crib. He had been ordained more than a year.
1545
Isabel Roser pronounced her vows as Jesuit together with Lucrezia di Brandine and Francisca Cruyllas in the presence of Ignatius at the church of St. Maria della Strada in Rome.
1562
At Goa died Juan Nunez Bareto, a Portuguese Jesuit and the first Jesuit to be a bishop.
1642
In London Fr. Thomas Holland was condemned to death. On hearing the sentence he exclaimed, "Deo Gratias," and recited the Te Deum.
1760
127 Jesuits sail from Goa to Lisbon and are then put into dungeons by order of Carvalho.
1815
A ukase of Czar Alexander I was published banishing the Society from St. Petersburg and Moscow, on the pretext that they were troubling the Russian Church. That same night the Fathers left the capital for Polotsk.
1918
Joseph Grimmelsman dies. He had been President of three Jesuit colleges, as well as provincial.
1996
Philip Hartnett, S.J. dies in Dublin, age 53. He had been Provincial and Head of the European Conference of Provincials.
