Who would have thought that in Ukraine, women and children would throw up their hands in a Nazi salute and gain a new faith. Jesuit faith. And in Latvia they will forget that they wrote in Russian since ancient times.
In pursuit of the number of baptized, the Jesuits went to great lengths. They changed Catholic rituals so that converts saw in it as little difference as possible from the rituals of local religions. Quite often the baptized were allowed to visit "pagan" temples as before. The Jesuits themselves willingly dressed up in the costumes of priests. Catholic religious books, prayers, hymns written especially for these countries were recited according to the model of the books and prayers of local cults familiar to the population. This adaptation was initiated by Francis Xavier, and his followers have gone much further in some respects. As early as 1570, they said that they had “saved the souls” of nearly 200,000 Japanese people, not counting women and children.
Such feats were sometimes hedged with democratic formalities: for example, in 1688, the pope received a petition from 200,000 Siamese to convert them to the Catholic religion. Of course, this method was easier than the difficult and dangerous journeys of Francis Xavier across the vast Asian territories.
The Catholic Church greatly appreciated the merits of this missionary king, who traveled about 50,000 kilometers in ten years. He was declared a miracle worker. He officially received the right to be called the apostle of India and Japan. In 1622 he was proclaimed a saint on the same day as Ignatius Loyola. A monument to him was erected in Goa.
The size of the income of the Jesuit order from missionary work can be judged by the fact that the Jesuits, who settled in China in the 16th-17th centuries, lent money to local merchants for huge interest - from 25 to 100 percent. We can also mention the report of the Canadian governor Colbert, written in 1672: he wrote that the Jesuit missionaries are more concerned about the production of beaver skins than about their preaching. A fifth of all slaves on Spanish plantations in Chile in the 18th century belonged to the Jesuits. In 1697, General Martin, who served in the French troops in India, wrote in the report as something self-evident: "It is known that after the Dutch, the Jesuits conduct the most extensive trade." Complaining that the Jesuit trade was causing great damage to the French East India Company, he added: “On a large squadron that arrived in 1690 from France to Asia, the Jesuits brought 58 heavy bales, of which the smallest was larger than the largest companion. In such bales were expensive European goods that could have a good market in the East Indies. And in general, not a single ship comes here from Europe, on which there was no luggage for the Jesuits "(quote from Theodore Griesinger's book, The Jesuits. The complete history of their overt and secret deeds from the founding of the order to the present. pp. 330-332).
Grisinger also wrote: “Some of them come to India with a genuine zeal for spreading the Gospel, but, as we know, there are very few of them, and they do not know the secrets of society. But there are still real Jesuits, although they cannot be seen because they are in disguise. These Jesuits interfere with everything and know everything about those who have the best goods. They recognize each other by certain signs and all act according to the same plan, so the saying "how many heads, so many minds" does not apply to these priests, because the spirit of all Jesuits is always the same, and it does not change, especially in commercial matters."
Nowadays, directly deriving income from missionary activity is no longer as important a task of the Jesuit order as it was in those distant times. Modern Jesuit missions are being established as the strongholds of European and American spheres of influence. The number of Jesuit missionaries is growing every year.
In addition to their numerous lower and secondary schools, the Jesuits even founded universities in colonial and dependent countries. For example, in Syria before World War II, 433 French missionary schools had 46,500 students. In addition, hundreds of Catholic schools were founded there by American and other missions - intelligence agencies of various countries at war with each other. In Beirut, back in 1875, the Jesuits opened their "University of St. Joseph", which has medical, pharmaceutical and law faculties. There were teaching and engineering institutes at the university, as well as a higher school of dentists.
Back in 1660, the Jesuit Jean Besson published in Paris an interesting book "Holy Syria", in which he gave a detailed overview of the entire eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea on five hundred pages. Along with a mass of materials of interest to French merchants and diplomats, the book is full of all sorts of reference information for missionaries, and the activities of the Jesuits in the area, as can be seen from the title of the book, are portrayed in the most laudatory tones.
So, under the guise of enlightenment, the Jesuits have long been creating their agents for propaganda and espionage in the most diverse segments of the population of those countries where they manage to penetrate.
Interestingly, in the 40s of the XX century, the Vatican, in order to retain its positions in colonial countries, actually canceled the decisions of the previous Roman popes who condemned the participation of Catholics in pagan rituals allowed by the Jesuits. So, in 1645, 1656, 1710 and 1930, the popes forbade the Catholics of Asia to adhere to the customs of the Confucian religion (this prohibition was achieved by the monks of orders competing with the Jesuits). However, in 1940, the Vatican "Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith" announced that Catholics in China were allowed to attend religious ceremonies in honor of Confucius, have his portraits in Catholic schools, and participate in Confucian funeral rites.
Even earlier, the Catholics of Japan and Manchuria received such permission from the Pope.
All these measures were taken in order to make the transition to Catholicism for the Chinese and other peoples of Asia easy and not embarrassing with the novelty of the rituals. In 1810 there were 200,000 Catholics in China, in 1841 - 320,000, in 1928 - 2,439,000, in 1937 - 2,936,175, and in 1939 - 3,182,950.
An extensive intelligence network was created. For example, in 1954, a certain Lacretelle, a Frenchman, the leader of the Jesuits based in Shanghai, was expelled from the PRC: he was accused of espionage, spreading provocative rumors, and so on.
The island states were also not left without attention. The Vatican unconditionally gave preference to the Jesuits. So, it was the Jesuits who were entrusted by Pope Benedict XV in 1921 with missionary activities on those islands in the South Pacific Ocean, which before the First World War belonged to Germany. The Jesuits first appeared there in 1667. In the first year they christened 13,000 islanders. Five years later, the number of converts reached 30,000. However, after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and their replacement in missions by Augustinians and Capuchins in 1767, the missions went sluggishly. In 1910 there were only 5,324 Catholics there. For 10 years this number has increased to 7 388 people. The Jesuits, transferred there in 1921 from Japan, in the first three years far surpassed everything done by their predecessors in decades: in 1924-1928 the number of Catholics rose from 11,000 to 17,230, and by 1939 - to 21,180., in less than twenty years their number here has almost tripled.
These missions, located in the Caroline, Marshall and Mariana Islands, which were of great strategic importance during the Second World War, served the Japanese armed forces, which were then fighting in the Pacific Ocean.
Throughout the war, the Japanese government paid large sums of money to these Jesuit missionaries for their political and intelligence services, supposedly to build schools. But they failed to defeat the Soviet soldiers.
The situation did not change after the war.“The successes of the national liberation movement in the Far East and South-West Asia,” wrote the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on January 7, 1951, “aroused concern in the Vatican, which took a number of measures to strengthen its espionage network in these countries. In October 1950, a meeting of representatives of missions operating in Korea, China, Indo-China, Indonesia was held in Rome.
The leaders of the Vatican intelligence have decided to replenish their ranks by recruiting pilgrims arriving from all countries in Rome in connection with the celebration of the so-called "holy year". As reported by the French newspaper "Axion", the general of the Jesuit Order, Janssens, is directly involved in recruiting for the Vatican's information service, whose attention is mainly attracted by Catholics from Korea, Indo-China and Indnesia. According to the newspaper, the pilgrims are kidnapped, taken to a special room, where they are trying by all means to get their consent to cooperate with their intelligence."
A similar introduction went gradually in other countries.
Until about the middle of the 14th century, Orthodox Christians in Lithuania did not tolerate religious oppression. The Christian religion of the Russian population corresponded to the feudal relations developing in Lithuania. Orthodoxy spread among the Lithuanians and among the people and the ruling elite (until the end of the 14th century, there were sixteen Orthodox princes in Lithuania). Russian law and the Russian language quickly took root in these lands; the most important state documents of Lithuania were then written in Russian (Boris Grekov, "Peasants in Russia", book 1, second edition, Moscow, 1952, pp. 252-253).
For a long time Catholicism did not have any spread in Lithuania; moreover, Catholic monks who made their way there from the west often became victims of cruel reprisals. This is understandable: after all, under the banner of Catholicism were the enemies of the Lithuanian and Russian peoples - "knight-dogs". Under this banner, the German aggression to the east was going on. What terror she carried with her is shown in ancient chronicles, for example, "The Chronicle of Livonia" by Henry of Latvia.
This was the case until the Lithuanian princes began to seek rapprochement with the Polish kings and thus opened a wide road to Lithuania for the Jesuits. Immediately, attempts began to forcibly reunite the Catholic and Orthodox Churches under the Vatican leadership.
The first to persistently help the popes in these attempts was the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jagiello (ruled from 1377), who was at first Orthodox, but then, in 1386, for political reasons converted to Catholicism, concluded an agreement with Poland and assumed the title of Polish king. He established the first Catholic bishopric in Vilna, provided the Lithuanian Catholics with legal advantages, and began building churches. One of his letters said: “We judged, decreed, promised, obliged and upon the reception of the saints, all the people of the Lithuanian people of both sexes, in whatever rank, condition and rank they were, took an oath to the Catholic faith and to the holy obedience of the Roman Church., to attract and attach by all means "(M. Koyalovich," Lithuanian Church Union ", vol. 1, Moscow, 1859, p. 8).
All Russians who did not want to convert to Catholicism were forbidden by Yagiello to marry Catholics and hold public office. The Catholic clergy received seats in the Senate under him.
The position of Catholicism was especially strengthened when Stefan Batory (ruled from 1576 to 1586) became the king of the Polish-Lithuanian state, who, like Jagaila, converted to Catholicism, began to patronize the "Society of Jesus" in every possible way. He liked to repeat: “If I were not a king, I would have been a Jesuit” (quote from Nikolai Lyubovich's book “On the history of the Jesuits in the Lithuanian-Russian lands in the 16th century”, M., 1888, p. 28). He equalized their Vilna collegium with the famous Krakow University and turned it into an academy. Taking Polotsk in 1579, he immediately founded a Jesuit college there, for which he received special gratitude from the papal nuncio Caligari (from the book "Monuments of Cultural and Diplomatic Relations between Russia and Italy", vol. 1, issue 1, L., 1925, p.. 71).
From 1587 to 1632, Sigismund III reigned - a pupil of the Jesuit Skarga Varshevitsky, rector of the Vilna Jesuit Academy. The mentioned Skarga became the confessor of this king. It was not for nothing that Sigismund called himself "the Jesuit king." Under him, the oppression of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples unfolded in full swing. It was during his reign that the Brest Church Union took place.
In Lithuania and Poland, there was a so-called patronage: every feudal lord fully disposed of the church institutions located on his lands. The main feudal lords were kings. They gave gifts to churches and monasteries. Having the right only to confirm the bishops, the kings directly appointed them: for example, it is known that, at his whim, Batory made two laity bishops, and once endowed a Catholic with an important Orthodox ecclesiastical dignity. The Polish king Sigismund-August in 1551, during the life of the Kiev Metropolitan Macarius, issued a formal guarantee to his close associate Belkevich that he would receive the rank of Metropolitan as soon as Macarius died. Belkevich was a socialite. He took monasticism after becoming a metropolitan under the name of Sylvester. In 1588, Sigismund III granted the Mstislavsky Onufriy Monastery for life to Prince Ozeretsky-Drutsky - a man also clearly secular, he was just about to go into the clergy, as the royal charter openly said.
The so-called brotherhoods were peculiar organizations that did a lot of useful things in the liberation struggle. They arose long ago in cities as organizations for charity and joint meals, and in the 15th-16th centuries they began to seriously influence the selection of the clergy and their activities, and they often entered into conflicts with them.
The brotherhoods were the centers of the cultural life of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples. They had schools and printing houses. In Vilna, Zabludov, Lvov and Ostrog, the Russian first printer Ivan Fedorov once worked in fraternal printing houses.
In 1586, a school (later outstanding) of Slavic and Greek languages was opened at one of the churches in Lvov, and with it a printing house "letters of Slovenian and Greek". It was shortly after the Lublin ounce and just ten years before the Brest one.
