Below are the remarks
of Fr. Timothy Kesicki, SJ, President, Jesuit Conference of Canada and the
United States, on behalf of the Society of Jesus in the United States, at the Georgetown
University Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition and Hope on April 18, 2017.
Sisters
and Brothers,
Most
especially the upwards of 100 descendants who have traveled so far to pray with
us,
Today
the Society of Jesus, which helped to establish Georgetown University and whose
leaders enslaved and mercilessly sold your ancestors, stands
before you to say:
We have greatly sinned,
In our thoughts and in our words,
in what we have done
and in what we have failed to do.
Saint
Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, mandates that each Jesuit
pray for the grace to examine his conscience so that: He may feel interior
knowledge of his sins; feel the disorder of his actions; and, hating these,
pray for the grace to correct himself.
The
Society of Jesus prays with you today because we have greatly sinned, and because
we are profoundly sorry.
The African-American
historian, Father Cyprian Davis, of the Order of St. Benedict, expresses our
great sin when he wrote, “The tragic sin
of Jesuit slaveholding presents to us not only the harshness of
slavery as it really existed, but also the moral quicksand of expedience and
inhumanity that sooner or later trapped everyone who participated in the
ownership, buying and selling of human beings.”
It is our
very enslavement of another, the very ownership of another, culminating in the tragic
sale of 272 men, women and children, that remains with us to this day, trapping
us in a historic truth for which we implore mercy and justice, hope and
healing.
When
we remember that together with those 272 souls we received the same sacraments;
read the same Scriptures; said the same prayers; sang the same hymns; and
praised the same God; how did we, the Society of Jesus, fail to see us all as
one body in Christ? We betrayed the very name of Jesus for whom our least
Society is named.
Now,
nearly 200 years later, we cannot heal from this tragic history alone. Many
have confessed and labored to atone for this sin, but mostly within the
confines of our own religious houses and apostolic works. Because we are profoundly sorry, we stand before God — and now before you,
the descendants of those whom we enslaved — and we apologize for what we have
done and what we have failed to do. Agreeing with playwright and poet Ntozake Shange that apologies “don’t
open doors, or
bring the sun back,” we apologize nonetheless, hoping to imagine a new
future.
With
the pain that will never leave us, we resist moving on, but embrace moving
forward … with hope.
Attributed
to Augustine, sainted son of Africa, sainted son of the Church:
“Hope has two beautiful daughters.
Their names are anger and courage;
anger at the way things are,
and courage to see that they do
not remain the way they are.”
Justly
aggrieved sisters and brothers: having acknowledged our sin and sorrow, having
tendered an apology, we make bold to ask — on bended knee — forgiveness. Though
we think it right and just to ask, we acknowledge that we have no right to it.
Forgiveness is yours to bestow — only in your time and in your way. Until then,
may we together confront with passion our past, present and future — and seek the courage to see that
things do not remain the way they are. On this Easter Tuesday, fix our eyes on Jesus, confident — that
even with your great grief and right
rage, with our sin and sorrow, “All will be well and all will be
well and every kind of thing shall be well” — to help all God’s children
and God’s greater glory. May it be so!
