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PREMIÈRE PARTIE – Action philanthropique et développement au Proche-Orient : acteurs, pratiques et expertises (xxe-xxie siècles)

Reluctance to Development? The General Survey of the Society of Jesus in Lebanon (1965–1970)

Une réticence au développement ? Le « Survey général » de la Compagnie de Jésus au Liban (1965-1970)
تردد تجاه التنمية؟ المسح العام للرهبنة اليسوعية في لبنان بين سنوات (1970-1965)
Philippe Bourmaud
p. 61-80

Résumés

Entre 1966 et 1970, la Compagnie de Jésus entreprit une enquête socio-scientifique à l’échelle mondiale en vue de réévaluer ses œuvres (ou « ministères ») à la suite des orientations du Concile Vatican II (1962-1965). Dans le cadre de la Vice-Province du Proche-Orient, regroupant l’Égypte, la Syrie et le Liban, cette enquête initia un débat de fond sur la place de la Compagnie au sein des sociétés arabes contemporaines. L’une des problématiques soulevées fut celle de savoir si le « développement » devait être intégré parmi les ministères jésuites. Cette proposition suscita toutefois des réticences au Liban. Expliquer cela par le conservatisme est un peu court : les Jésuites du Liban étaient un groupe hétérogène, tant démographiquement qu’intellectuellement. En analysant le processus du « Survey » et l’espace public entourant les jésuites, cet article s’attache aux raisons enchâssées d’une réticence paradoxale à l’égard d’une injonction conciliaire approuvée par les jésuites depuis le début.

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Texte intégral

Introduction

1Between 1966 and 1970, the Society of Jesus undertook a worldwide social scientific survey to examine Jesuit works (or “ministries”) after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Within the Vice-Province of the Near East (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon), the Survey kickstarted a debate on the position of the Society vis-à-vis the societies of the Arab world. One of the issues was whether development should become a Jesuit ministry. The idea met with reluctance in Lebanon.

2Overall, the Survey reflected contemporary commitments to the “development imperative” (Hershberg and Thornton, 2005). In Lebanon, however, it followed the disillusions brought about by the failure of an earlier development plan, the Lebret plan (1959–1964), which had mobilised Catholic institutions and energies (Lebret, 2014; Malsagne, 2011; Verdeil, 2011).

3Internationally, the Survey triggered an explosive discussion about the goals of Jesuit action, an imperative laid down by the founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). Progressives criticised a Jesuit tendency to elitism for the sake of operational efficiency (Beaumier, 2013). A new general of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe (1907–1991), was targeted by conservatives for his efforts to reorient the works of the order and his acceptance in 1968 of “the preferential option for the poor” (Arrupe, 1968; Emonet, 2022) under the inspiration of the Council. The shift sowed deep division in the Society of Jesus. Progressives, notably in Latin America, pushed for an agenda of social justice and development targeting the poor. In countries such as Spain, conservatives, on the contrary, took a stand to defend traditional ministries, including notoriously selective Jesuit secondary schools (Maier, 2007, p. 65-66).

4In Lebanon, the new orientations were met with scepticism. It is tempting to explain this by the dominance of political or theological conservatism among Jesuits in Lebanon (Jalabert, 1987), but the question of development in the Survey paints a more complex picture. To what should we assign the reluctance of the Jesuits vis-à-vis promoting development among their ministries? Was it triggered by the dearth of skilled staff within the Vice-Province, questioning the feasibility of action for development? Could it be down to tradition alone and an attachment to Loyola’s principles, despite over 400 years of changing engagement with different societies? Could it be accounted for by present political concerns – to wit, by an ideological opposition to the predominant models of development in the Middle East, the laissez-faire pro-Western way and its socialism-inspired Arab nationalist alternative? Did the Jesuits’ hesitations go back to the bitter memory of the failure of the Lebret plan? Was the reluctance due to relational patterns between the Jesuits and the societies in which they operated in Lebanon? In the reports of the Survey, external, internal and relational factors overlap, with different authors stressing different explanations.

  • 1  The Jesuit missions of Syria, Egypt and little Armenia were fused in the Near East mission in 1937 (...)

5This article will focus on Lebanon, which concentrated the greater number of the Jesuits of the Vice-Province. It is part of ongoing research into the Survey in the Vice-Province. We could not access the archives of the Jesuits in Cairo, nor could we find material on the Survey in Syria, except in Beirut. The Jesuits archives in Beirut, while documenting the Vice-Province,1 are tilted towards Lebanon. Still, they document differences of opinion with reverberations across the Vice-Province and illustrate how the Survey was appropriated locally and globally.

A Survey in a Changing Church and a Booming Lebanon

6The Survey was conducted during a period of deep and fast transformation in Lebanon and in the Church.

7In Lebanon, politics had been polarised since the “mini-civil war” of the summer of 1958 (Baroudi, 2006), which opposed partisans of Arab nationalism, largely Muslim parties, to pro-Western, mainly Christian ones. During the confrontation, sectarian economic inequalities had shown their destructive power. A large-scale development plan, the Lebret plan, was devised by a group of experts under the leadership of Dominican Father Louis-Joseph Lebret, in order to bridge the socio-economic gaps between regions and religious communities. The Vice-Province had no direct part in it but provided academic infrastructure through the Jesuit Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) (Fevret, 2011). The plan reflected Lebret’s notion of “harmonised development”.

8“Harmonised development” took from social Catholicism’s preference for class cooperation over class struggle. For Lebret, class struggle was a fact of life but not a motor of history. His originality lay in the idea that progress and modernisation required the participation of the “under-developed” social milieux targeted by development policies. This all-round inclusive approach was relevant in Lebanon’s post-1958 segmented context, in which whole communities were affected by the unequal distribution of public resources. In a segmented state such as Lebanon, a remedy to division could not be found in authoritarian reform, but in conciliation between various public, private and communal stakeholders. Large sectors of public policy in Lebanon, such as education and health, were already dominated by private, denominational actors. The Institut international de recherche et de formation en vue du développement harmonisé (International Research and Training Institute for Harmonized Development, IRFED) headed by Lebret postulated that Lebanon’s president after the “mini-Civil war”, Fouad Chéhab, could not rely on the state alone to reduce interregional and interdenominational disparities. The Lebret plan was to bring together public and private actors, as well as representatives of various communities, to direct development funding and policies, based on the supposedly shared assumption that redistribution was better than civil war. This proved a hard sell to the fromagistes, the political elites who ruled by granting state resources to their respective sectarian and local clientele. The plan was eventually shelved by the Lebanese political elites in 1964 (Malsagne, 2011, p. 250-251), and Lebanon’s liberal economic order was reasserted, leading to sharply classist and conflictual industrial relations.

9The defeat of Arab nationalist regimes in the June 1967 War and, from 1970 onwards, the Palestinian resistance operations from Lebanese soil radicalised Lebanese politics, while industrial action intensified in the wake of the rapid economic growth of the 1960s (Trabulsi, 2007). The growth of revolutionary left-wing parties inspired by Palestinian militancy was accompanied by a flurry of ideas and cultural experimentation in a country that enjoyed both an economic boom and high literacy, buoyed by the presence of a strong higher education sector (Khalil and Raymond, 2024). Lebanese society was quickly evolving away from a corporatist state, though not from its sectarian build-up.

10In the late 1960s, Church institutions were only beginning to absorb the massive changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Among the decrees and constitutions adopted over its course, the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (December 8, 1965) was of particular importance to the Jesuits. It underlined the importance of development and the contribution of the Church to modern society in general. Reconciling development as a this-worldly endeavour with an eschatological perspective, the constitution aimed to mobilise “whoever promotes the human community at the family level, culturally, in its economic, social and political dimensions, both nationally and internationally, such a one, according to God’s design, is contributing greatly to the Church as well, to the extent that she depends on things outside herself’” (para. 44). Paragraph 65 repudiated both “doctrines which obstruct the necessary reforms under the guise of a false liberty” – a transparent reference to laissez-faire capitalism – and doctrines that “subordinate the basic rights of individual persons and groups to the collective organization of production”, a fig leaf for authoritarian development as conceived in socialist countries. Gaudium et Spes and the encyclical Populorum Progressio (March 26, 1967), for the writing of which Lebret had been an expert and a major influence (Pelletier, 1992, p. 141; Pelletier, 2017), promoted harmonised development.

A Roman Initiative Taken Over by the Provinces

  • 2  ALSI 10 B 15, Message by Sami Kuri, S.J., to all members of the Vice-Province, Jamhour, September  (...)

11On December 9, 1965, the day after Gaudium et Spes had been adopted, the new General of the Society of Jesus, Pedro Arrupe, announced the Survey. It followed Pope Paul VI’s call to the Jesuits to fight atheism in all its forms.2 Jesuits were to examine how modern life could foster atheism, and whether Jesuit ministries counteracted the process. The aim of the Survey was for the Society of Jesus itself to assess these ministries, so as to facilitate their adaptation to the constitutions adopted during the Council. The process would deepen rifts within the Society of Jesus regarding issues such as Jesuit involvement in development (Bourg, 1982; Faase, 1980; Feix, 2019; Gannon, 1982; Scatena, 2016).

  • 3  ALSI 10 B 15, Central Committee of the Survey, Bulletin no. 8, Rome, April 1968.

12The successive guidelines sent by the General Curia, the permanent governing body of the Society of Jesus, promoted the goals of harmonised development. Questionnaires guided the enquiry by stressing specific topics such as poverty, social justice and development. They were not the only tools of orientation coming from the Roman centre, as instructions were also sent to anticipate changes following the Survey. Instructions suggested the establishment, in April 1968, of a “Development office”, within each province. Its objective would be “establishing relations with various sectors of lay government, with other religious communities, with the bishops in the areas where Jesuits work […]”.3 These guidelines notwithstanding, the Survey was taken over by the provinces, which pushed forward their own agendas.

  • 4  ALSI 10 B 15, “Survey général de la Compagnie” [December 1965 or January 1966].

13In the Vice-Province, the supervision of the Survey was left to the Jesuit Selim Abou (1928–2018), professor of anthropology at the USJ and a public intellectual. Abou had gained fame through controversy, following the publication of his book Le bilinguisme arabe-français au Liban. Essai d’anthropologie culturelle (Abou, 1962). In his work, Abou argued that the cultural specificity of Lebanon in the Arab world was due to its bilingualism, whereas critics pointed out that French was only used by a select, mainly Christian group that could afford to send its children to selective schools. This positioned Abou as a defender not only of the educational interests of the Jesuits, but of a socio-economic order dominated by Christian upper classes. The man could not be painted with one broad brush stroke, however, as he continued, throughout his academic life, to show an interest in migration and especially Lebanese diasporas (Abou, 1972), in the anthropological experiment of the Jesuit Reductions and the Guaranis (Abou, 1995), and in the cultural and linguistic dimensions of development (Haddad and Abou, 1997). His views of the political and economic order in Lebanon were sharply critical. He was heavily involved in the central commission of the Survey, as a deputy coordinator for “the Third World”.4 We need to distinguish between his positions in the Lebanese political landscape, which can be described as conservative and attached to the interests of the Christian community, and his intellectual leanings, which led him to adhere to the developmentalist goals of the Survey.

  • 5  ALSI 10 B 15, Sami Kuri, S.J., to the members of the Vice-Province of the Near-East, Jamhour, Sept (...)
  • 6  ALSI 10 B 15, “Coordination régionale du Survey. Pr.-Or. + Af. Nd. Réunion de Lyon: 29 août-1° sep (...)
  • 7  ALSI 10 B 16, Selim Abou to “P.C.”; Beirut, August 22, 1968.
  • 8  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., “La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Franc (...)

14The Survey was conducted through the Vice-Province in four periods. After months of preparation, it began officially in the Vice-Province of the Near on October 15, 1966, under the guidance of national coordinators.5 A second phase, up to September 1967, was devoted to the production of preliminary national reports. A meeting in Lyon on August 28–September 1, 1967, gathered representatives of all the Arab world to compare the reports.6 Opinions of individual members of the Vice-Province were collected for the General Assembly of the Vice-Province in Jamhour (Lebanon) from August 16 to 22, 1968.7 An enquiry on Jesuit communal life and a presentation of the reports in Rome to close the matter (July 1970) concluded the process.8 Meanwhile, the June 1967 war had already challenged the Jesuits’ conclusions on the region’s development.

Lebanon: A Concentration of Ministries

  • 9  ALSI 10 B 16, “Doc. 8/1. Evolution numérique de la Vice-Province et de ses régions” [July 1968].
  • 10  ALSI 10 B 16, WIllibrord Welten, S.J., “Profil dynamique des œuvres de la Vice-Province” [July 196 (...)

15Which ministries fell under the Survey’s purview, and how accessible were they? Lebanon contained by far the highest number of ministries within the Vice-Province. Jesuit presence had long been concentrated mostly in Christian locales. As Lebanon urbanised and developed in the 1950s and 1960s, Jesuit works quickly concentrated in urban surroundings while remaining in essentially Christian areas. Jesuit manpower also underwent a degree of concentration. In 1942, out of 233 members of the Vice-Province of all statuses, 36 had been working in Egypt, 24 in Syria, 11 remained in Turkey and 107 were active in Lebanon. By 1968, out of a grand total of 228 throughout the Vice-Province, the figures were 41, 20, 3 and 124 respectively.9 Among the Jesuits in Lebanon, the concentration in Beirut was a constant: in 1968, 58% were attached to the USJ, mainly located in Beirut.10

  • 11  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes” [July 1968].
  • 12  ALSI 10 B 16, Selim Abou, S.J., “Situation de l’Université Saint-Joseph” [July 1968].
  • 13  ALSI 10 B 16, WIllibrord Welten, S.J., “Profil dynamique des œuvres de la Vice-Province” [July 196 (...)

16In the Survey, the mapping of the ministries by country was done in an interim report on ministries by Sami Kuri in the summer of 1968,11 completed by a special study of Saint-Joseph University (USJ) by Selim Abou12 and a “dynamic study” by Willibrord Welten (1924–2003), philosopher and one of a growing contingent of Dutch Jesuits working in Lebanon.13 The need for three different descriptive reports on the ministries of the Vice-Province reflected the labour-intensive character of the Survey, but also revealed differences of opinion.

  • 14  “A Photo Gallery of Some Jesuits Who Are Working in the Near East”, June 10, 1997, http://www.ndj. (...)
  • 15  Salim Daccache, S.J., “ ‘Une communauté de racines’. Allocution du Professeur Salim Daccache s.j., (...)

17Sami Kuri, a Jesuit of Lebanese origin born in Mexico in 1937, cut a conservative figure. As rector of the Pontifical Seminary and the second Arab provincial of the Vice-Province (1965–1968), in charge at the time of the Survey,14 he left an authoritarian memory among younger Jesuits.15 But, as a provincial, Kuri presented a different face. He announced the start of the Survey to all the members of the Vice-Province in a letter dated September 27, 1966. He stressed the goal of eliminating or strengthening ministries and, while he did not mention social work among them, he referred to a “holistic apostolate” (Apostolat d’ensemble), a phrase implying collective mobilisation of clerks and lay persons, as well as a more social type of apostolate. His main concern was not development but intercommunal, Islamic–Christian relations. Kuri appears representative of a prominent portion of the Society of Jesus in Lebanon that privileged spiritual work over the new injunctions for Jesuits to be present “in this world”.

  • 16  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes” [July 1968].

18The description of the ministries reveals greater interest in social work on Kuri’s part, with significant space devoted to dispensaries and social work, as well as Kuri’s open elitism.16 Neither Kuri nor other Jesuits fitted neatly in a binary of dominant ideological options, between Arab nationalistic socialism and pro-Western laissez-faire, but they retained a distinct doctrinal genealogy, that of the social teaching of the Church.

  • 17  “Collège Saint-Grégoire (Etablissement affilié) (CSG)”, Collège Notre-Dame de Jamhour, http://www. (...)
  • 18  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes”, July 1968.

19The ministries included a network of institutions, ranging from education and higher education – still the Jesuits’ main field of intervention – to apostolic work and to social work, most of which were located in or around Beirut. The Saint François-Xavier Oriental Seminary in Beirut was home to the Faculty of Theology of Saint-Joseph University of Beirut (USJ). The Collège Notre-Dame, which had been the main Jesuit secondary school in Beirut, had been moved in 1953 to a suburb 10 km away in Jamhour. The Collège Saint-Grégoire, established in 1923 in Beirut by Armenian Jesuit Jean Mécérian,17 was devoted to the education of Armenian children. Dispensaries in Borj Hammoud, an Armenian suburb of Beirut, in Beirut’s Quarantine – an impoverished neighbourhood next to what was already then one of Beirut’s main landfills – and in Sadd al-Bušriyyah, a working- and lower-middle-class area east of Beirut and south of Borj Hammoud, provided health and social services to economically disadvantaged denizens of Beirut’s urban area. To these works should be added apostolic movements, youth and cultural organisations such as Scouts, a community of Christian teachers, the Newman Club of Beirut, a cinematheque, as well as various chaplaincies in schools and prisons. Most of this apostolic work was supervised from within the USJ. Only the residency and training work in Arabic in Bikfaya and the residency, dispensary, observatory, farm and winery of Tanaïl-Ksara, located in the central Beqaa Valley, retained a peripheral and rural character.18

20This concentration had historical roots, with the establishment of Jesuit missions in what was then the Ottoman Empire, first in Syria and especially Mount Lebanon from 1831 onwards. The other missions of what would form the Vice-Province developed decades later, from 1879 onwards for Egypt and from 1881 on for central Anatolia. Yet while the Jesuit presence in Lebanon had already been concentrated in mainly Christian areas, it had been disseminated, with a preference for rural or small urban settings, such as Bikfaya in the Metn mountains, Ghazir along the coast north of Beirut, Zahle in the Bekaa Valley or ‘Ayn Ibl in Jabal ‘Amil. In the first decades of the 20th century, the dissemination increased through the creation of a network of small churches initiated by Joseph Delore, S.J. (Nordiguian, 2003). Yet the geography of the Jesuit institutional network underwent a major contraction in the two decades after Lebanon’s independence (1943), summed up by Welten in his dynamic study:

  • 19  ALSI 10 B 16, WIllibrord Welten, S.J., “Profil dynamique des œuvres de la Vice-Province” [July 196 (...)

The salient facts are: the slow disappearance of the [small] schools’s work, the closing down of Zahle, the moving of the college to Jamhour, the repurposing of Tanaïl-Ksara, the handing over of Ghazir to the Patriarchate, the creation of St Jean Chrysostome. The change seems mostly geographic: is it not a bit of abandoning of the countryside and the mountain to concentrate in a few centres, mainly Beirut, and looking for new structures there? There is on top of that a relative abandon of primary teaching in favour of focusing on secondary and higher education.19

  • 20  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes”, July 1968.

21Retreating from less well-off areas ran counter to the goal of outreach across communal and socio-economic lines inherent to harmonised development. But with the growing concentration of migrants from all parts of Lebanon in Beirut, Jesuit works ended up being cross-denominational, whereas Jesuit had mostly worked in majority Christian locales. The most selective Jesuit schools still retained a largely Christian clientele: Muslims made up no more than 7 to 8% of the students at Notre-Dame College in Jamhour. But social work was much more diverse: the Notre-Dame des Ouvriers project in Sadd al-Bušriyyah, a diverse area, welcomed Catholics, Orthodox and Shiites in equal proportions.20 It was less the geography than the nature of the work that determined its denominational character.

A Reluctance Towards Development?

22The aftermath of the Survey suggests a reluctance among Jesuits in Lebanon to implement Gaudium et Spes, Populorum Progressio, and the conclusions of the Survey. Jesuit works show continuity to this day: the USJ is still operating, despite suggestions at the end of the Survey that it should be closed,21 as is Notre-Dame de Jamhour, which expanded in the 1970s to include women students.22 The Ksara winery at Ksara was sold in 1973,23 but the Tanaïl farm remains formally in the hands of the Jesuits, though it is operated by a private association, Arcenciel.24 While Jesuits initiated the foundation of branches of Caritas as tools to fund development projects – during and after the Survey, in 1967 in Egypt (Mayeur-Jaouen, 2016) and from 1972 onwards in Saida and then across Lebanon – 25 these were not Jesuit works per se.

23The Survey paints a blurred picture: one of both endorsement of development and scepticism regarding the Society of Jesus’ involvement in it. Ahead of the Jamhour meeting in August 1968, Survey coordinators analysed the results of the opinion questionnaires on Jesuit ministries and the answers from Jesuits in Lebanon produced contrasting results.

24On the one hand, development was described in the Survey’s questionnaires as a neglected area: it was ranked low (12th) by order of importance among the existing sectors of apostolate, although not as low as in the other countries of the Vice-Province (17th in Egypt and 13th in Syria). But development ranked much higher in terms of the importance it was considered it should have – lower, however, than in the opinion of the Jesuits in Egypt and Syria (Lebanon: 4th, Egypt: 3rd, Syria: 3rd). Development elicited interest in Lebanon, but not as urgently as in the rest of the Vice-Province, where authoritarian Arab nationalist, socialist, developmentalist regimes prevailed.

  • 26  ALSI 10 B 16, “Document 10. Attitudes & opinions des Jésuites sur les œuvres” [July 1968].

25On the other hand, when asked about the nature of the apostolates that should be prioritised, the Jesuits in Lebanon gave first place to “direct religious action”, while their counterparts in Egypt picked “human promotion” and those in Syria chose “presence to the world”.26 The difference was profound: the latter two expressions referred to the Council’s repudiation of a strict distinction between the spiritual and the temporal and were used to refer to social forms of apostolate. “Human promotion” was used explicitly by Pope Paul VI to refer to development (Maier, 2007, p. 38-39). The issue was debated in depth at Jamhour, during the discussions on resolutions adopted to establish new priorities among the ministries.

26Two draft proposals were considered as a general principle to guide the selection of the ministries. The first one insisted on the spiritual role of the Vice-Province and matched the priority expressed by the Jesuits of Lebanon:

– Given our desire for insertion in the Eastern Churches and their insistence, in the face of modernisation, on catechism [catéchèse] and a more intense spiritualisation;
– believing, moreover, that our action is operated through the Christians and must give first priority to their training to open them to the Modern world;
we must, in our apostolic choices, give priority to catechism, but a catechism that would bring out the Christian values out of modernity and be oriented towards all men.

27The second proposal, which was adopted by 22 votes to 13, stressed the importance of ministries that met the conciliar imperative for the Church to act in this world, in favour of development and social justice:

  • 27  ALSI 10 B 16, “Texte définitif (amendé par les Commissions compétentes) des propositions votées pa (...)

– Given the urgency of the problems posed to mankind by modernization in our underdeveloped regions,
– believing, moreover, that this is the best way for us to serve the Muslim world, which makes up the vast majority of the populations of the Near East,
we must, in our apostolic choices, give priority to action in favour of human, social, economic and political promotion, but in such a way as to enlighten it with the spirit of the Gospel.27

28The final tally indicates that a number of the latter chose the second proposal. The results showed division and a degree of scepticism towards the involvement of the Society of Jesus. This scepticism was compounded by the all-too-enthusiastic endorsement of development in the societies and the regimes of the region.

29Francis Hours (1921–1987), a Jesuit and archaeologist originally from Lyon and based in Beirut, wrote the synthesis of the debates at Jamhour in August 1968. He commented on the popular appeal of development across the Vice-Province:

  • 28  ALSI 10 B 16, Francis Hours, S.J., “Document 1: Priorités apostoliques”, s.d. [summer 1968].

The problems we face are therefore those of underdeveloped countries […]
To solve these problems, the countries we are interested in have chosen two different types of solutions: socialism in Syria and Egypt, liberalism in Lebanon. Regardless of the ideological path chosen, attention to economic problems and the mystique of development and progress play a key role in people’s concerns.28

30Yet Hours’ synthesis also betrayed doubts regarding the ways development projects were carried out in the countries of the Vice-Province. The words “mystique of development” convey a reluctance to be swept up in a new sector of operation under the influence of dominant public opinion.

31The few years following the defeat of the Arab nationalist regimes in the June 1967 War were a time of intense political mobilisation across the Arab world, with a flurry of radical ideas encouraged by the Palestinian revolution, especially in Beirut. Hours’ formulation shows the caution with which the Jesuits as a group approached the trend. Doubts may also have been triggered by divisive events within the Society of Jesus: two days after the end of the Jamhour meeting, the Second Latin American Episcopal Conference began at Medellín under the authority of Pope Paul VI, where Pedro Arrupe endorsed the disputed “preferential option for the poor” (Maier, 2007, p. 23; Grieu, 2020, p. 155).

32No doubt these events, and the development of the theology of liberation alongside the Medellín Conference, captured the attention of the Jesuits in Lebanon. But they are insufficient to explain the contrasting views of development expressed in the Survey, or the limited engagement with development after it. What other factors were at play?

An Internal Matter of Feasibility?

33Survey reports questioned the financial and human resource feasibility of a shift to development action in Lebanon.

34Financially, the situation of the Jesuits in Lebanon created expectations. They carried an image of wealth and of collusion with the notable families that concentrated wealth and power in the country. The topic gained prominence with the political radicalisation and student movement in Lebanon in 1968–1969. The February 1969 issue of Proche-Orient Chrétien, the academic and critical journal of the White Fathers in Jerusalem, addressed at length the role of the Churches in development, reflecting on contributions to the francophone magazine L’Orient culturel in January of the same year. Among the contributions, progressive Christians claimed that they “[refused] material wealth (money, property, lands, businesses) and political power in our Church. [They wanted] a serving Church, in accordance with Christ’s will” (Ternant, 1969, p. 54). The writer for Proche-Orient Chrétien added: “[when] religious properties (waqfs) make up to 27% of the territory of Lebanon, it is hard for us to preach ‘Blessed are the poor!’ while talking about the need for justice…” (ibid., p. 51).

  • 29  ALSI 10 B 16, Edouard Mouracadé, S.J., “Document 11. Limitations financières. Ressources et limita (...)

35While the Jesuits in Lebanon were conscious of that image, Lebanese Jesuit Edouard Mouracadé, the bursar of the Vice-Province, argued that the Jesuits did not have the resources necessary to fund new ministries. For the academic year 1966–1967, the cumulative sources of income of the Vice-Province amounted to 425,000 Lebanese pounds (LP), and the total costs of existing ministries to 420,000 LP. Mouracadé commented, alluding to the context created by the June 1967 War: “[that] goes to show that the budget is barely balanced, and the slightest snag (whether political, economic, or charity-related) will severely hamper our current finances”.29 He concluded that funding a new, cash-demanding activity such as development projects was nearly impossible. But Mouracadé was the only one to express concern about funding in the Survey. Budget anxieties were not a decisive factor in explaining the Jesuits’ reluctance towards development work.

  • 30  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., ““La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Fran (...)
  • 31  Développement I, special issue of Travaux et Jours, 35, April–June 1970.
  • 32  ALSI 3 J 2, “Survey. Liban” [1967].

36More than financial resources, the main roadblock highlighted by the Survey was human resources and the absence of skills within the Vice-Province. Opinions in the Survey differed as to where those skills should be used and what they should be. In the final report, Francis Hours underlined the need for Jesuits trained in economics.30 But the need for training in development sciences, pervasive throughout the Survey, should be contextualised. A number of Jesuits showed academic interest in development, as shown by the table of contents of Travaux et Jours, the social science in-house journal of the USJ: the entire April–June 1970 issue was devoted to development,31 as were articles in every single issue of the second half of the 1960s. Among the older generation of Jesuits, André Le Génissel – a Gaullist officer turned Jesuit and author of a PhD in law on industrial workers in Turkey – had been associated with the IRFED mission and served as a close adviser to Lebanese President Fouad Chéhab (Malsagne, 2011, p. 255-257). Economics, rather than the broader field of development studies, was the academic weakness in the Vice-Province. In the Survey’s report on Lebanon, the chapter on economics was borrowed from a piece by a lay professor of economics at the USJ, Elias Gannage.32

A Question of Doctrine?

37More than the skills themselves, the respondents to the Survey had in mind principles of action, whether inspired by Ignatian tradition or by recent conciliar texts. On the surface, the Survey showed broad support for development action. But did these entail a discussion of Ignatian principles?

  • 33  Saint Ignatius, Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, 622.

38The main issue was the sociology of Jesuit works. There were sharp divisions as to which social groups should be targeted. According to Saint Ignatius, “the spiritual aid which is given to important and public persons should be regarded as more important […] whether these persons are laymen such as princes, lords, magistrates, or administrators of justice, or whether they are clerics such as prelates”.33 The reasoning was a principle of economy: to allow Jesuits, few in number, to exert maximal influence. But the debates of the Survey do not dwell on this Ignatian principle or oppose an “elitist” vs. a “populist” option, both epithets being inaccurate.

39Jesuits have strenuously rejected accusations of elitism and social bias (Grieu, 2020). Nor was open elitism expressed by Jesuits in Lebanon in the 1960s. But the Ignatian principle of cultivating a formative influence on the powerful lived on in the words of Francis Hours:

  • 34  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Franci (...)

[Effective] presence requires loyal collaboration with governments and the unhesitating acceptance of political ideologies and forms of administration, socialist or otherwise, insofar as this is compatible with our own conception of things. […]
[Many] of our employees are foreign nationals. Socialism, combined with a somewhat distrustful nationalism, is not conducive to the integration of foreigners. For nationals, it would theoretically be easier, but the Muslim background makes it difficult to accept the collaboration of Christians on an equal footing with others.
34

40Conversely, the respondents to the Survey did not endorse a literal implementation of the “preferential option for the poor”, a phrase that does not occur anywhere in the archives related to the Survey. They stressed, to varying degrees, the need to invest more in social work and participative action for development.

  • 35  ALSI 10 B 15, Comité d’action pour une pastorale d’ensemble - Beyrouth, “Réunion du 26 janvier 196 (...)

41The Survey does not provide an example of the simultaneous top-down and bottom-up approach formulated by Hours. The Jesuits clashed on what “elite” meant: some argued for maintaining ties with existing ruling elites; others favoured targeting emerging elites, regardless of their socio-economic background or communal identity. To imagine how the latter option might have been implemented, consider an experiment conducted in Beirut since 1964: the Comité d’action pour une pastorale d’ensemble (Action Committee for Global Pastoral Work). Headed by a charismatic Greek Catholic prelate, Mgr. Grégoire Haddad, it combined catechism, prayer groups, social work and neighbourhood mobilisation and provides a template.35 Haddad promoted local self-organisation while articulating the work of the six sectors of action with municipal policies through his political connections. Taking the case as a model would have required the Jesuits to clarify their stance regarding empowering lay persons, which was a point of contention.

Patterns of Relationship?

  • 36  ALSI 10 B 16, Selim Abou, “Document 5-2. Situation de l’USJ”, Beirut, 30 July 1968.

42The biggest roadblock for the Jesuits in moving into the field of development lies in the patterns of relations that emerge in the Survey with various lay groups and institutions. This becomes apparent in January 1968 in discussions triggered by the Survey on the future relationship between the Jesuits and the USJ. The Jesuit deans diverged on the feasibility of maintaining Jesuit supervision and on its spiritual benefits.36

43However, over the course of 1968 – against the backdrop of the May 1968 student movement, and of the student protests in Lebanon in the final months of that year – positions became more entrenched. In October 1968, Selim Abou wrote a piece on the Lebanese student movement in Mawāqif, the cultural and critical journal headed by the Syrian secularist poet Adonis (‘Alī Aḥmad Sa‘īd). There, using data compiled for the Survey, he argued that the movement in Lebanon was radically different from its French counterpart, as Lebanese students sought the reform of Lebanese universities rather than civilisation change (Abou, 1968).

44Some Jesuits reacted defensively to the radicalisation in the Lebanese student movement. In January 1969, a special issue of L’Orient culturel became an occasion for members of the Student Christian Youth (Jeunesse étudiante chrétienne, JEC), the main Catholic student organisation, to publish a manifesto. The text denounced the sclerotic nature of the Eastern Churches, Western influence through the Catholic Church, and the collusion between the Catholic Church and the Lebanese Christian bourgeoisie in defending the status quo. It called on the Church to urgently implement Populorum progressio and to promote development. Jesuit theologian Jean Aucagne (1926–2006) retorted with scathing irony, criticising the authors’ lack of patience and realism, and doubting whether Lebanese Muslims would accept the egalitarian character of a secular state, even with the closure of denominational socio-economic gaps. Another Jesuit, Augustin Dupré-Latour (1921–2011), professor of theology at the USJ, took a more accommodating stance, interpreting the text as a call for the independence of the Church vis-à-vis the Lebanese state and its ruling class (Ternant, 1969, p. 53-55). External events were pushing the Jesuits to adopt polarised – though not uniform – views over the course of the Survey, with some attempting to restore clerical control.

  • 37  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Franci (...)

45A salient conclusion of the Survey concerned the image of Jesuits in Lebanese society. Respondents perceived that the Society of Jesus was seen as essentially a foreigner institution, confined in a special relation with bourgeois Christian milieux – as was said of all Latin Catholic institutions in the JEC manifesto. Jesuits noted in their answers that the Society of Jesus remained alien, even though it was also seen as a “national religious order”,37 due to its contribution to the history of the country since the establishment of the first missions in 1831 (Verdeil, 2011).

  • 38  ALSI 10 B 16, “Digest des tableaux pour aider à leur lecture”, chart 25, s.d. [1968].

46The Survey presented a more complex situation, however. The analysis of the results of the enquiry on the opinions and behaviours showed different patterns of opinion correlated to age and geographical origin. Elderly European priests favoured “spiritual ministries”; students, younger Jesuits and especially younger Arab priests insisted on “socio-economic research” and “Islam”. Those most insistent on action in development were Arab and younger Jesuits.38

  • 39  ALSI 10 B 16, “Critères généraux pour le choix des œuvres et des ministères”, s.d. [1968].

47Again, Lebanon-based Jesuits gave significantly more importance to “directly religious action” than their counterparts in Syria and Egypt.39 Hours drew on these findings to offer a gallery of portraits of Jesuits in Lebanon:

  • 40  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Franci (...)

From the mass, a few character types emerge, attenuated traits of which exist in many of our own, and which, pushed to the point of caricature, could be formulated as follows:
– The ‘old-France’ Frenchman, who has not yet forgotten the days of the Mandate and does not realize that he is now the guest of Syrians or Lebanese who, for their part, are at home.
– The ‘secular’ Dutchman, who believes that all that was done before his (recent) arrival is worthless and that all clerical behaviour should be dropped, which, in a very confessional world, is not without creating incidents.
– The ‘hung up’ Oriental, who does not feel at home in his own country, sees the Western fathers as colonialists, yet cannot forget that he is of a minority and needs foreigners.
40

  • 41  ALSI 3 J 2, “Survey. Liban” [1967].

48But these differences were matched by the demands of lay persons vis-à-vis the Jesuits. The latter were caught between the rock of sectarianism, which they saw as a doomed social structure retaining useful social and cultural functions,41 and the hard place of internal disaffection among lay Christians, who vocally denounced the sectarian system. Selim Abou, a man of liberal instincts, noted in the aftermath of the rejection of the Lebret Plan, that Lebanese Christians became atheists “because they reject sociological Christianity”, i.e. sectarianism, “because they see it as a communal form of alienation”, and socialists “because they reject sociological Christianity as a socio-economic alienation: [one of their themes] is the abolition of Lebanese economic liberalism, which is indeed one of the most selfish economic regimes in the world” (Abou, 1968, p. 8). Neither he, nor those Jesuits who leaned towards sympathy for voluntaristic development in Arab nationalist regimes, were satisfied with existing models. Yet for Christians on the left, amid the growing influence of revolutionary parties, Populorum progressio was becoming a bare minimum, and Jesuit inertia was increasingly unacceptable.

Conclusion

49By giving Jesuits a channel to express individual opinions for a wider – though still internal – audience, the Survey was bound to show lines of division. In Lebanon, the Jesuits appear divided by ideology, age and geography, as well as cultural proclivities. But these divisions are not in themselves sufficient to explain why the Jesuits of Lebanon hesitated before – and for the most part refrained from – committing to development as a new ministry. Development was a consensual goal, and Populorum progressio was quoted left and right by the Jesuits in the Survey and in the public sphere.

50Jesuits on either side of the political fence found themselves in awkward positions. Conservatives were dismayed by the efforts of the fromagistes to kill the Lebret Plan and then by the insistence of economic liberals on denying demands for a proper welfare state – all reasonable demands in the eyes of Jesuits. Progressives were drawn further towards radical positions by lay Christian activists who endorsed not only egalitarian redistribution but also the dismantling of the sectarian state, solidarity with the Palestinian armed struggle and revolutionary methods. The latter ambiguity was illustrated in 1970 by Paul Nwiya (1925–1980), a Chaldean Christian Jesuit working between the Vice-Province in Beirut and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris as a specialist in Islamic manuscripts. In 1970, he published in Adonis’s Mawāqif, arguing that the Church was in essence torn between the foundational and legal authority of God as the Father – which led it to conserve existing structures – and his human experience as the Son, which showed the world to be an unacceptably unjust place requiring revolutionary change (Nwiya, 1969).

51Torn between the near-impossibility of choosing between contradictory positions – left or right – and between unacceptable models of development, with little hope of implementing harmonised development except marginally and from below, the Jesuits could do little. They ended up speaking at length about development, its various socio-cultural aspects and how to make it more balanced, but did not act collectively to make it happen.

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Notes

1  The Jesuit missions of Syria, Egypt and little Armenia were fused in the Near East mission in 1937, which became the Vice-Province of the Near East in 1939 and an independent province in 1959 (Verdeil, 2018).

2  ALSI 10 B 15, Message by Sami Kuri, S.J., to all members of the Vice-Province, Jamhour, September 27, 1966.

3  ALSI 10 B 15, Central Committee of the Survey, Bulletin no. 8, Rome, April 1968.

4  ALSI 10 B 15, “Survey général de la Compagnie” [December 1965 or January 1966].

5  ALSI 10 B 15, Sami Kuri, S.J., to the members of the Vice-Province of the Near-East, Jamhour, September 27, 1966.

6  ALSI 10 B 15, “Coordination régionale du Survey. Pr.-Or. + Af. Nd. Réunion de Lyon: 29 août-1° septembre 1967. Ordre du jour”.

7  ALSI 10 B 16, Selim Abou to “P.C.”; Beirut, August 22, 1968.

8  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., “La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Francis Hours à la Conférence finale du Survey, Rome 30 janvier 1970”.

9  ALSI 10 B 16, “Doc. 8/1. Evolution numérique de la Vice-Province et de ses régions” [July 1968].

10  ALSI 10 B 16, WIllibrord Welten, S.J., “Profil dynamique des œuvres de la Vice-Province” [July 1968]. The Observatory at Ksara, in the Bekaa Valley, was also attached to the USJ, but by then it was essentially a one-man job.

11  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes” [July 1968].

12  ALSI 10 B 16, Selim Abou, S.J., “Situation de l’Université Saint-Joseph” [July 1968].

13  ALSI 10 B 16, WIllibrord Welten, S.J., “Profil dynamique des œuvres de la Vice-Province” [July 1968].

14  “A Photo Gallery of Some Jesuits Who Are Working in the Near East”, June 10, 1997, http://www.ndj.edu.lb/old/jesuites/provphot.htm [accessed in June 2025].

15  Salim Daccache, S.J., “ ‘Une communauté de racines’. Allocution du Professeur Salim Daccache s.j., à la cérémonie de remise de la Médaille de la Légion d’Honneur par Madame Grillo, Ambassadrice de France, à la Résidence des Pins, le 19 avril 2022, à 18h30”, https://usj.edu.lb/photos/pdf/discour_pdf1_3468.pdf [accessed in June 2025].

16  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes” [July 1968].

17  “Collège Saint-Grégoire (Etablissement affilié) (CSG)”, Collège Notre-Dame de Jamhour, http://www.ndj.edu.lb/ndj/college-saint-gregoire [accessed in June 2025].

18  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes”, July 1968.

19  ALSI 10 B 16, WIllibrord Welten, S.J., “Profil dynamique des œuvres de la Vice-Province” [July 1968].

20  ALSI 10 B 16, Sami Kuri, S.J., “Document 5. Description des œuvres communes”, July 1968.

21  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Francis Hours à la Conférence finale du Survey. Rome”, 30 January 1970. The USJ in the Survey would make for an article in itself.

22  “Nous du collège”, no. 288, March 2018, http://www.ndj.edu.lb/publications/nous288 [accessed in June 2025].

23  ALSI 12 C 2, Contract between Jean-Pierre Sara and the Society of Jesus represented by Sobhi Hamoui, Beirut, December 28, 1973.

24  “Où sommes-nous?”, Arcenciel Liban webpage, https://arcenciel.org/qui-nous-sommes/ [accessed in June 2025].

25  “Liban: Caritas Lebanon”, Caritas.org, https://www.caritas.org/ou-nous-trouver/moyen-orient-et-afrique-du-nord-mona/liban/?lang=fr [accessed in February 2025].

26  ALSI 10 B 16, “Document 10. Attitudes & opinions des Jésuites sur les œuvres” [July 1968].

27  ALSI 10 B 16, “Texte définitif (amendé par les Commissions compétentes) des propositions votées par l’Assemblée du Survey”, August 1968.

28  ALSI 10 B 16, Francis Hours, S.J., “Document 1: Priorités apostoliques”, s.d. [summer 1968].

29  ALSI 10 B 16, Edouard Mouracadé, S.J., “Document 11. Limitations financières. Ressources et limitations actuelles” [July 1968].

30  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., ““La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Francis Hours à la Conférence finale du Survey”, Rome, January 30, 1970.

31  Développement I, special issue of Travaux et Jours, 35, April–June 1970.

32  ALSI 3 J 2, “Survey. Liban” [1967].

33  Saint Ignatius, Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, 622.

34  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Francis Hours à la conférence finale du Survey, January 30, 1970.

35  ALSI 10 B 15, Comité d’action pour une pastorale d’ensemble - Beyrouth, “Réunion du 26 janvier 1966”.

36  ALSI 10 B 16, Selim Abou, “Document 5-2. Situation de l’USJ”, Beirut, 30 July 1968.

37  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Francis Hours à la Conférence finale du Survey. Rome”, January 30, 1970.

38  ALSI 10 B 16, “Digest des tableaux pour aider à leur lecture”, chart 25, s.d. [1968].

39  ALSI 10 B 16, “Critères généraux pour le choix des œuvres et des ministères”, s.d. [1968].

40  ALSI 3 J 7, Francis Hours, S.J., La Compagnie de Jésus dans le monde arabe. Rapport du Père Francis Hours à la conférence finale du Survey, January 30,1970.

41  ALSI 3 J 2, “Survey. Liban” [1967].

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Philippe Bourmaud, « Reluctance to Development? The General Survey of the Society of Jesus in Lebanon (1965–1970) »Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 158 (2/2025) | 2025, 61-80.

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Philippe Bourmaud, « Reluctance to Development? The General Survey of the Society of Jesus in Lebanon (1965–1970) »Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 158 (2/2025) | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2025, consulté le 23 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/24026 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15c90

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Auteur

Philippe Bourmaud

Université Jean Moulin – Lyon 3, Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes (UMR 5190), Lyon, France
Institut français d’études anatoliennes (UAR 3131), Istanbul, Turquie
philippe.bourmaud[at]univ-lyon3.fr

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