Before the Suppression, the missions of the Levant were largely entrusted to the Jesuits of the province of Lyons. The alliance of the Grand Turk with the kings of France assured the safety of the missionaries and hence there were stations not only at Constantinople, but in Roumelia, Anatolia, Armenia, Mingrelia, Crimea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and in the Islands of the Ægean Sea. The work of predilection in all these places was toiling in the galleys with the convicts, or in the lazar houses with the plague-stricken. Between 1587 and 1773, more than 100 Jesuit missionaries died of the pest. In 1816, that is two years after the re-establishment of the Society, the bishops of the Levant petitioned Rome to send back the Jesuits. Thanks to Paul of Russia, they had resumed their old posts in 1805 in the Ægean, where one of the former Jesuits, named Mortellaro, had remained as a secular priest, and lived long enough to have one of the Fathers from Russia receive his last sigh and hear him renew his religious vows. This was the beginning of the present Sicilian Jesuit missions in the Archipelago. The Galician province has four stations in Moravia, and the Venetian has posts in Albania and Dalmatia.
In 1831 Gregory XVI ordered the Society to undertake the missions of Syria; but at that time Mehemet Ali of Egypt was at war with the Sultan, and the Druses and Maronites were butchering each other at will. Finally, in the name of the Sultan, Emir Haidar invited the Fathers to begin a mission at Bekfaya on the west slope of Mount Lebanon and about 10 miles west of Beirut. Simultaneously Emir Beckir, who was an upholder of Egypt, established them at Muallakah, a suburb of Zahlé on the other side of the mountain. At Hauran, on the borders of the desert, they found a Christian population in the midst of Druses and Bedouins. They were despised, ill-treated and virtually enslaved. They had no churches and no priests, were in absolute ignorance of their duties as Christians, and were stupefied to find that Rome had come so far to seek them. The work of lifting them up was hard enough, but it was a trying task to be commissioned by Rome to settle the disputes that were continually arising between Christian, Orthodox, and Turk, and even between ecclesiastical authorities. Father Planchet was the chief pacificator in all these wrangles, and for his punishment was made delegate Apostolic in 1850, consecrated Bishop of Mossul in 1853, and murdered in 1859 when about to set out for Rome.
Father Planchet was a Frenchman; with Father Riccadonna, an Italian, and Brother Henze, a Hanoverian, he went to Syria in 1831, at the joint request of the Melchite bishop, Muzloum, Joseph Assemani, the procurator of the Maronite patriarch and the Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo, Germanus Harva. A hitherto unpublished document recently edited by Father Jullien in "La Nouvelle Mission en Syrie" gives a detailed account of the journey of this illustrious trio from Leghorn to Syria.
"The vessel was called 'The Will of God,' and the voyage was," says Riccadonna, "an uninterrupted series of misfortunes, — fevers, faintings, rotten water, broken rigging, shattered masts, wild seas, frightful tempests, a sea-sick crew and escapes from English, Turkish and other cruisers on the high seas. When they came ashore the cholera was raging throughout the country." The narrative is full of interest with its picturesque descriptions of the people, their habitations, their festivals, their caravans, their filth, their fanaticism and the continually recurring massacres of Christians. The travellers journeyed to Beirut and Qamar and Bagdad and Damascus, and give vivid pictures of the conditions that met them in those early days. The medical ability of the lay-brother was of great service. He was the only physician in the country, with the result that, according to Riccadonna, each stopping place was a probatica piscina, every one striving to reach him first. "In Arabia," says the Relation, "as in the plains of Ba'albek, there is nothing but ignorance and sin. There are sorcerers and sorceresses in every village; superstitions of every kind, lies, blasphemies, perjury and impurity prevail. It is a common thing for Christians to bear Mussulman names and to pray to Mahomet. They never fast, and on feast days never go to Mass. Of spiritual books or the sacraments they know nothing; clan and personal vengeance and murder are common, and sexual immorality indescribable." Such was the state of these countries in 1831.
In 1843 the mission, which until then depended on the general, was handed to the province of Lyons. In that year a seminary for native priests was begun at Ghazir, in an old abandoned castle bought from an emir of the mountains. It began with two students, but at the end of the year there were twenty-five on the benches, and in that small number, many Rites were represented. A college for boys soon grew up around it, and a religious community of native nuns for the education of children was established. The latest account credits the Sisters with nearly 4,000 pupils.
New posts were established at Zahlé and ancient Sidon and also at Deir el Qamar. The prospects seemed fair for the moment, for had not the French and Turks been companions in arms in the Crimea? But in 1860 the terrible massacres in Syria began as a protest of the ultra-Mussulmans against the liberal concession of Constantinople to the Christians. In the long list of victims the Jesuits counted for something; for on June 18, four of them were butchered at Zahlé and a fifth at Deir el Qamar. In that slaughter eight thousand Christians were killed; 560 churches destroyed; three hundred and sixty villages devastated and forty-two convents burned. Three months later the Turkish troops from the garrison at Damascus butchered eight thousand five hundred people, four prelates, fifty Syrian priests, and all the Franciscan Friars in the city. They levelled to the ground three thousand eight hundred houses and two churches, and would have done more; but the slaughter was stopped when the Algerian Abd-el-Kader arrived on the scene. They still live on a volcano. Preceding and during the war of 1914, massacre of the Christians continued as usual.
Armenia is the Ararat of Scripture. Little Armenia, in which the Jesuits are laboring, is an irregular strip of territory that starts from the Gulf of Alexandretta and continues on towards the Black Sea. Its principal towns are Adana, Cæsarea, Civas, Tokat, Amasia, and Marswan, about two or three days' journey from each other. The country is mountainous, without railroads or other means of transport. The highways are infested with brigands; and the climate is excessively hot and excessively cold. The difficulties with which the Church has to contend in this inhospitable region are first, the government which is Turkish; second, the secret societies which are continually plotting against their Turkish masters; and third, the American Protestant sects which are covering the country with churches, orphan asylums, schools and dispensaries, and flooding it with anti-Catholic literature, and money. In 1886 all the schools were closed by the Turks, but when the French protested they were reopened. In 1894 two of the priests died while caring for the cholera victims and that helped to spread the Faith, for, of course, there are never any parsons on the scene in such calamities. Under Turkish rule also, massacres are naturally chronic, but Brou informs us that on such occasions the Protestants suffer more than the Catholics; for the latter are not suspected of being in the secret revolutionary societies, while the others are known to be deeply involved.
The population of this region consists of 500,000 Christians, of whom 14,000 are Protestants and 12,000 Catholics. The rest are Monophysite schismatics. In the mission besides the secular priests there are 57 Jesuits and 50 teaching sisters from France. There are 22 schools with 3,309 pupils, but only 504 of these children are Uniate Catholics. They are what are called Gregorians, for the tradition is that Armenia was converted to the Faith by St. Gregory the Illuminator. There are few conversions, but the schismatics accept whatever Catholic truth is imparted to them. They believe in the Immaculate Conception; pray for the dead; love the Pope; say their beads; and invoke the Sacred Heart. For them the difference between Romans and Gregorians is merely a matter of ritual. In several places, however, whole villages have asked to be received into Roman unity. As a people they look mainly to Russia for deliverance from the Turk, but neither Turk nor Russian now counts in the world's politics and no one can foresee the future.
Father Roothaan had long been dreaming of sending missionaries to what until very recently has been called the Unknown or Dark Continent, Africa. Hence when the authorities of the Propaganda spoke to him of a proposition, made by an ecclesiastic of admitted probity, about establishing a mission there, Roothaan accepted it immediately, and in the year 1846 ordered Father Maximilian Ryllo with three companions to ascend the Nile as far as possible and report on the conditions of the country. Ryllo was born in Russia in 1802 and entered the Roman province in 1820. After many years of missionary work in Syria, Malta and Sicily he was made rector of the Urban College in Rome on July 4, 1844, and was occupying that post when he was sent by Father Roothaan to the new mission of Central Africa.
In 1845 Ryllo was at Alexandria in search of "the eminent personage" who had suggested the mission and had been consecrated bishop in partibus, for the purpose of advancing the enterprise. But the "eminent personage" was not to be found either there or in Cairo. Hence after waiting in vain for a month, Ryllo and his companions started for Khartoum which was to be the central point for future explorations. After a little rest, they made their way up the White Nile. They were then under the equator, and had scant provisions for the journey, and no means of protection from the terrible heat, and, besides, they were in constant peril of the crocodiles which infested the shores of the river. The first negro tribes they met spoke an Arabic dialect, so it was easy to understand them. The native houses were caves in the hillsides, a style of dwelling that was a necessity on account of the burning heat. Their manner of life was patriarchal; they were liberal and kind, and seemed to be available foundation stones for the future Church which the missionaries hoped to build there. Satisfied with what they had discovered, they returned to Khartoum, but when they reported in due time to Propaganda, the mission was not entrusted to them. It was handed over to the Congregation of the Missionaries of Verona.