Tadeusz Brzozowski

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The Very Reverend Tadeusz Brzozowski, S.J.

Tadeusz Brzozowski, S.J. (October 21, 1749 - February 5, 1820) was the nineteenth Superior General of the Society of Jesus. He was born in (Marienburg, Royal Prussia), Malbork Poland. He was admitted into the Jesuit order in 1765.

Father Brzozowski was ordained in Vilnius, and was teaching in Minsk when Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuits on July 21, 1773, through the brief Dominus ac redemptor. Upon its execution three weeks later, the Jesuits of all wholly Roman Catholic nations and colonies had been expelled. The leaders of the order in the Orthodox nations where the Papal suppression order was not enforced became known as temporary Vicars General. Father Brzozowski fled east, and became a Jesuit in Russia on February 2, 1784. He became a successful and well known preacher and was named vicar by a Lithuanian, Father Franciszek Kareu, in 1797. In 1799, Father Kareu became temporary Vicar General. On March 7, 1801, Pope Pius VII issued the brief Catholicae fidei, giving approval to the existence of the Society in Russia and allowed the surviving Jesuits the power to elect a Superior General for Russia. Father Brzozowski became the third man elected to this position on September 2, 1805.

By then it was clear that the suppression would eventually be undone. Yet no thought could be given to reconstruction of any kind while the Napoleonic Wars raged on, absorbing the energies of every country and leaving Europe devastated. In the New World however, the Society struggled to reemerge. In October 1806, Father General Brzozowski allowed an American novitiate with ten novices to be opened at Georgetown. Later that year, Bishop Joseph-Octave Plessis of Québec wrote to Pius VII and to Brzozowski, begging that Jesuits be sent from Great Britain not only for Halifax but to work among the aboriginal people in Upper Canada as well. Brzozowski sent four men—two from Russia and two from England—but the war in Europe and the dangers of travel made their mission impossible.

Ongoing European tension saw Pius VII excommunicate Napoleon, and in retaliation, the Pope was forced once again into exile from Rome and imprisoned for two years at the Château de Fontainebleau. Pius VII returned to Rome in 1814 after the fall of Napoleon, and one of his first acts on arrival was to restore the Society throughout the universal Church. On August 7, 1814, almost exactly forty-one years to the day since Clement XIV suppressed the Society, Pius VII celebrated mass in the Gesú, and formally promulgated the bull of restoration, Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum. The newly reconstituted Jesuits deemed a general congregation unnecessary—Father Brzozowski retained the title and became Father General for the whole Society. He was the link which bound the two parts of the Society together.

With the fall of Napoleon, Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, had become the most powerful sovereign in Europe. A monstrous intrigue was suspected for the alliance of the eastern autocrat with the Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful France. Alarmed at the new growth of the Jesuits, Alexander published an edict on December 20, 1815 expelling them from St. Petersburg. Brzozowski was detained and forbidden to return to Rome, despite his ailing health and his protests to the contrary. Father Brzozowski died on February 5, 1820 and was buried in Płock, Russian Poland.

Preceded by: Gabriel Gruber	Father General of the Society in Russia 1805 – 1814	Succeeded by: restoration
Preceded by: suppression	Superior General of the Society of Jesus 1814 – 1820	Succeeded by: Luigi Fortis