When the Pope had taken his seat upon the throne, he handed the Bull to Belisario Cristaldi, who in a clear voice, amid the applause of all in the chapel, read the consoling words which the Jesuits listened to with tears and sobs. Then one by one some hobbling up with the help of their canes, others leaning on the arms of the distinguished men present, knelt at the feet of the Pontiff, who spoke to them all with the deepest and tenderest affection. For them it was the happiest day of their lives and the old men among them could now sing their "Nunc dimittis."
Pacca then handed to Panizzoni a paper appointing him superior of the Roman house, until the nomination arrived from Father General. The professed house, the novitiate of Sant' Andrea and other properties were also made over to the Society with a monthly payment of five hundred scudi.
On entering the Gesù, the Fathers found the house almost in the same condition as when Father Ricci and his assistants left it in 1773, to go to the dungeons of Sant' Angelo. It was occupied by a community of priests, most of them former Jesuits, who had continued to serve the adjoining church, which, though despoiled of most of its treasures, still possessed the remains of St. Ignatius. Two years later, the novitiate of Sant' Andrea was so crowded that a second one had to be opened at Reggio. Among the novices at that place was Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia, who had resigned his crown to enter the Society. He died there in 1819. In 1815 the Jesuits had colleges in Orvieto, Viterbo, Tivoli, Urbino, Ferentino, and Galloro, Modena, Forlì, Genoa, Turin, Novarra, and a little later, Nice. In Parma and Naples, they had been at work prior to 1814.
Just eight days before these happenings in Rome, an aged Jesuit in Paris saw assembled around him ten distinguished men whom he had admitted to the Society. It was July 31, the feast of St. Ignatius, and the place of the meeting was full of tragic memories. It was the chapel of the Abbaye des Carmes, where, in the general massacre of priests which took place there in 1792, twelve Jesuits had been murdered. In the old man's mind there were still other memories. Fifty-two years before, he and his religious brethren had been driven like criminals from their native land. Forty years had passed since the whole Society had been suppressed. He had witnessed all the horrors of the French Revolution, and now as he was nearing eternity — he was then eighty-five — he saw at his feet a group of men some of whom had already gained distinction in the world, but who at that moment, had only one ambition, that of being admitted into the Society of Jesus, which they hoped would be one day re-established. They never dreamed that seven days after they had thus met at the Abbaye to celebrate the feast of St. Ignatius, Pius VII who had returned from his captivity in France would, by the Bull "Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum," solemnly re-establish the Society throughout the world.
The old priest was Pierre-Joseph Picot de Clorivière. He was born at St. Malo, June 29, 1735 and had entered the Society on August 14, 1756. He was teaching a class at Compiègne when Choiseul drove the Society out of the country, but though he was only a scholastic, it had no effect on his vocation. He attached himself to the English province, and after finishing his course of theology at Liège in Belgium, was professed of the four vows about a month after Clement XIV had issued his Brief of Suppression. The decree had not yet been promulgated in the Netherlands. Instead of going to England as one would expect, he returned to his native country as a secular priest, and we find him in charge of a parish at Paramé from 1775 to 1779. He was also the director of the diocesan College of Dinan, where he remained up to the time of the Revolution. Meantime, he was writing pious books and founding two religious congregations, one for priests, the other for pious women in the world. The former went out of existence in 1825. The latter still flourishes.
Having refused to take the constitutional oath, he was debarred from all ecclesiastical functions, and began to think of offering himself to his old friend and classmate at Liège, Bishop Carroll, to work on the Maryland missions; but one thing or another prevented him from carrying out his purpose, though on the other hand it is surprising that he could make up his mind to remain in France. His brother had been guillotined in 1793; his niece met the same fate later; his sister, a Visitation nun, was put in prison and escaped death only by Robespierre's fall from power; several of his spiritual followers had perished in the storm, but he contrived to escape until 1801, when, owing to his relationship with Limoellan, who was implicated in the conspiracy to kill the First Consul, he was lodged in jail. He was then sixty-nine years old.
During his seven years of imprisonment, he wrote voluminous commentaries on the Bible, chiefly the Apocalypse. He also devoted himself to the spiritual improvement of his fellow-prisoners, one of whom, a Swiss Calvinist named Christin, became a Catholic. As Christin had been an attaché of the Russian embassy he posted off to Russia when he was liberated in 1805, taking with him a letter from Clorivière to the General of the Society, asking permission for the writer to renew his profession and to enter the Russian province. Of course, both requests were granted. When he was finally discharged from custody in 1809, Clorivière wrote again to Russia to inform the General that Bishop Carroll wanted to have him go out to Maryland as master of novices. As for himself though he was seventy-five years of age, he was quite ready to accede to the bishop's request. The General's decision, however, was that it would be better to remain in France.
Meantime, Father Varin, the superior of the Fathers of the Faith, had convoked the members of his community to consider how they could carry out the original purpose of their organization, namely: to unite with the Jesuits of Russia, but no progress had been made up to 1814. In his perplexity, he consulted Mgr. della Genga who was afterwards Leo XII, and also Father Clorivière. But to his dismay, both of them told him to leave the matter in statu quo. This was all the more disconcerting, because he had just heard that Father Fonteyne, who was at Amsterdam, had already received several Fathers of the Faith. Whereupon he posted off to Holland, and was told that both della Genga and Clorivière were wrong in their decision. To remove every doubt he was advised to write immediately to Russia, or better yet to go there in person. He determined to do both. At the beginning of June 1814, he returned to France to tell his friends the result of his conference with Father Fonteyne, but during his absence Clorivière had been commissioned by Father Brzozowski to do in France what Fonteyne had been doing in Holland. That settled everything, and on July 19, 1814, Fathers Varin, Boissard, Roger and Jennesseaux were admitted to the novitiate; and a few days later, Dumouchel, Bequet, Ronsin, Coulon, Loriquet, with a lay brother followed their example. On the 31st, St. Ignatius' Day, they all met at the Abbaye to entreat the Founder of the Society to bless this inauguration of the province of France.
In virtue of his appointment Father Clorivière found that he had now to take care of seventy novices, most of whom were former Fathers of the Faith; in this rapidly assembled throng it was impossible to carry out the whole scheme of a novitiate training in all its details. Indeed, the only "experiment" given to the newcomers was the thirty-days retreat, and that, the venerable old superior undertook himself. Perhaps it was age that made him talkative, perhaps it was over-flowing joy, for he not only carried out the whole programme but overdid it, and far from explaining the points, he talked at each meditation during what the French call "five quarters of an hour." But grace supplied what was lost by this prolixity, and the community was on fire with zeal when the Exercises were ended. How soon they received the news of what happened on August 7, in Rome, we do not know. But there were no happier men in the world than they when the glad tidings came; and they continued to be so even if Louis XVIII did not deign or was afraid to pay any attention to the Bull, and warned the Jesuits and their friends to make no demonstration. The Society was restored and that made them indifferent to anything else.
In Spain, a formal decree dated May 25, 1825, proclaimed the re-establishment of the Society, and when Father de Zúñiga arrived at Madrid to re-organize the Spanish province, he was met at the gate of the city by a long procession of Dominicans, Franciscans, and the members of other religious orders to welcome him. Subsequently, as many as one hundred and fifteen former Jesuits returned to their native land from the various countries of Europe where they had been laboring, and began to reconstruct their old establishments. Many of these old heroes were over eighty years of age. Loyola, Oñate and Manresa greeted them with delight, and forty-six cities sent petitions for colleges. Meanwhile, novitiates were established at Loyola, Manresa and Seville.