Joseph Pignatelli, Priest

*november 14 Memorial St. Joseph Pignatelli, Priest St. Joseph Pignatelli was born of noble parents in Saragossa, Spain, on December 27, 1737. After attending the Jesuit school in his native city, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1753, and he was ordained in 1762. For the next four years, this Spanish grandee taught his classes, visited prisons, and at times ministered to condemned convicts on their way to execution. In April 1767, King Charles III of Spain (reigned 1759–88), without ever making known his reasons, expelled the Jesuits from his kingdom and confiscated their property. The Jesuits were deported to Italy, where they settled as best they could. With the Society’s suppression by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, the Jesuits now took on a variety of tasks in various dioceses—teaching in seminaries, doing parish work, and filling chaplaincies. Throughout these years, Fr. Pignatelli maintained contact with most of them, looking forward to the time when they could all be reunited. When he learned that the Society was never suppressed in the territory of Catherine the Great of Russia (reigned 1762–96), he immediately wrote and associated himself with them, but he continued to work in Italy. He lived in exile for forty years, regrouping the former Jesuits and awaiting the day when the Society could be restored throughout the world. He was not to see that day, for he died on November 15, 1811, three years before the Society’s restoration by Pope Pius VII on August 7, 1814. Fr. Pignatelli was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1954. The opening prayer in the Mass today refers to his courage and strength in uniting his scattered brethren.