47 Spanish Jesuits died in the year, and although I don’t know the number, no more than one or two Jesuits must have been ordained priests. So the result cannot be more desperate. Surely in 2026 the Jesuits will lose the mark of 500, of which more than half will be over 80 years old. And the majority of the youngest will be between 60 and 80 years old.
We do not know another figure that we also believe to be very important and that makes the situation more agonizing: the abandonments. There are two types of them. Those who, using an expression that today makes no sense, hang up their habits—since none wear habits—to secularize, and those who, without abandoning the priesthood, switch to the diocesan clergy. So the figure of annual desertions will approach, although still at some distance, a hundred.
In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, it was quite common for diocesan priests to join the Company, for example, the saintly Father Rubio. Today those entries have disappeared.
Well, tell me if that is not the announcement of a death that seems increasingly imminent. And the abandonment by the Jesuits of so many schools, which had always been a nursery of vocations, comes to confirm what we say.
The following are data from 2021;
AGE GROUPS. QUANTITY.
20-30 years. 11.
30-40 years 53.
40-50 years 71.
50-60 years. 80.
60-70 years. 71.
70-80 years. 153.
80-90 years. 244.
90-100 years. 128.