Denominations

The Society of Jesus (Jesuits)

On the sources. Built from the order's own Constitutions and Complementary Norms read directly — a primary source of unusual quality, because the Constitutions argue their provisions rather than merely stating them, and in the case of the lifelong generalate explicitly name the objection to their own arrangement and point to the remedy. Two cautions. First, the text is layered: a sixteenth-century constitution modified and clarified by norms adopted at later General Congregations, so a provision read alone can mislead, and the modifying norm is noted here wherever the text flagged one. Second, only portions were read — property, admission, missioning, the generalate and the general congregation. Dismissal, suppression of houses, and everything on the civil-law side are left as declared gaps rather than inferred.

Identity

Founded

Founded in 1540, and profiled here as the concrete instance of the structure described in general terms under Catholic religious institutes. That companion profile can only set out the framework the Code of Canon Law establishes, because the Code defers to each institute's own constitutions at exactly the points a reader most wants settled — which level owns property, what a member retains, how superiors are chosen. This profile answers those questions for one order. Its governing law comes in two layers that must be read together: the Constitutions, written by Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century and still the operative text, and the Complementary Norms adopted by later General Congregations, which clarify and in places modify them. Provisions below are cited by the Constitutions' marginal numbers, with the modifying norm noted where one applies.

Headquarters

Rome, where the Superior General resides. The order is organised into provinces under provincial superiors, who hold authority delegated from the General rather than conferred by election from below.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part V [512-513] — the General communicates his authority, most ordinarily and completely, to the provincial superiors

What it calls itself

Calls itself a Society and an order of clerks regular — not a denomination, and not a church. It appears on this site for the same functional reason its companion profile does: it holds property, admits and forms and dismisses its own members, assigns them, receives what they earn, and disciplines them, all under its own constitutions and largely outside the authority of the bishops in whose dioceses its houses stand.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part V [512] and Part VI ch. 2

Congregations

Not established.No count of Jesuit houses, provinces or institutions was established for this profile. The order publishes catalogues but none was consulted, and as with the companion profile the unit is a house or community rather than a congregation.

Adherents or attendance

Not established.No current membership figure was verified. Figures circulate widely but none was traced to an order source for this profile.

Property

Who holds title

Mixed — varies by congregation or state

The most instructive property arrangement on this site, because the answer depends on what kind of institution is asking — and the split is deliberate rather than accidental. Houses and churches accepted to aid souls may not hold fixed revenue at all: it is "not licit to have any fixed revenue, even for the sacristy or building or anything else, in such a manner that any administration of this revenue is in the control of the Society," and the professed are to live on alms in the houses. A founder may leave an endowment for a building's maintenance without offending against poverty, provided the revenue "is not at the disposition of the Society and the Society is not in charge of it." Colleges are treated on the opposite principle. They may hold and administer fixed revenue, and the Constitutions provide for its administration and preservation — while forbidding the professed living in houses to draw on college revenues for their own support. The Complementary Norms carry the distinction forward in modern terms: apostolic communities and churches follow the rules laid down for houses, while apostolic institutes follow those for colleges, with seminaries and infirmaries for the order's own sick and elderly keeping their own principles. So a Jesuit university may hold an endowment while the Jesuit community living beside it may not hold fixed revenue of its own. Anyone asking who owns Catholic institutional wealth in the United States needs that distinction before the question can even be posed properly.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part VI ch. 2 [555-557], with notes [556] and [558]
  • governing document Complementary Norms 191, distinguishing apostolic communities and churches from apostolic institutes

The instrument

None between the order and any diocese, and none between the order and its members. The controlling instruments are the order's own: the Constitutions and the Complementary Norms, which define what each kind of institution may hold. A bishop has no interest in a Jesuit house, college or university by reason of its standing in his diocese.

When a congregation closes

Not established.The provisions governing the suppression of a house or province and the disposition of its goods were not located in the portions of the Constitutions and Norms read for this profile.

When a congregation departs

The question does not translate, as it does not for religious institutes generally. A Jesuit house is a community of professed members under their own superiors, not a congregation that could affiliate elsewhere. Where the order withdraws from a work it has staffed for a diocese, what ends is an agreement, and each juridic person keeps what it owned.

Money

Where the money goes The Society of Jesus (Jesuits): Members' earnings and entitlements, all of it — nothing is held locally; some support flows back. The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) The community All of it — nothing is held locally Members' earnings and entitlements — no transfer occurs, because there are not two parties.
Generated from this profile's own data rather than drawn by hand, so it cannot drift from the text. Rates are abbreviated here; the full terms and their qualifications are below.

Members' earnings and entitlements

All of it — nothing is held locally — All of it, under the vow of poverty

Whatever a member earns is acquired for the order, under the general law of religious poverty rather than by any Jesuit peculiarity — salary, stipend, pension, subsidy and insurance alike. The order's own contribution is to specify where that money may then rest: not, in the case of a professed house, as fixed revenue under the Society's administration. The result is a structure with real internal walls. Money flows to the order, and within the order it is confined by the kind of institution holding it. That is a more articulated arrangement than "everything goes to the centre," and it is why the companion profile's general account needed a concrete instance.

What happens if it is not paid

Constitutive rather than enforced, as in any institute of vowed religious: there is no collection mechanism because there is nothing for a member to withhold.

Money that flows down

The order maintains its members for life from common goods, and colleges maintain their own works from their own revenues. The Constitutions are explicit that these purses do not mix in one direction: those living in houses are not to avail themselves of the fixed revenues of the colleges.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part VI ch. 2 [557]

Who sets the pastor's pay

A national scale

Not negotiated by the member, who has no capacity to contract for his own remuneration and for whom any payment is acquired by the order. Where Jesuits serve an institution outside the order, terms are settled between the order and that institution. The enum fits poorly; the substance is that the individual is not a party.

Who pays the pastor

The national body

The order supports the member, whoever pays for the work.

Minimum standards

Not established.Not applicable in the form the field asks. What the order provides its members is governed by its constitutions and provincial practice, which were not examined on this point.

Pension and benefits

Provided by the order from its own goods, with pensions and insurance accruing to a member acquired for the institute rather than retained by him. The Complementary Norms preserve distinct principles of poverty for the order's houses and infirmaries caring for its elderly and sick, which is where the cost of an ageing membership falls.

  • governing document Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 668 §3 (accessed 2026-07-31)
  • governing document Complementary Norms 191, on houses and infirmaries for the care of the elderly and sick

Clergy

Who credentials clergy

The national body

The order admits, and the authority to do so is the General's: "the authority to admit into the body of the Society those who ought to be admitted will be vested in whoever may be its head." Because the General cannot be everywhere, he communicates that authority — most ordinarily and completely to the provincial superiors, and where necessary to local superiors, rectors, visitors, and occasionally even to someone outside the Society, such as a bishop, where no professed member is present. Note the direction of travel. Authority here descends by delegation from a single head, rather than ascending from those governed. Admission ordinarily requires more than two years of probation.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part V [512-514] with note [513]

How a pastor is placed

Appointed

Members are missioned by superiors, and no congregation calls anyone. The order also carries an obligation that has no counterpart anywhere else on this site: a fourth vow, taken by the professed, of obedience to the pope with regard to missions. The Constitutions are careful about its scope — "the entire purport of this fourth vow of obedience to the pope was and is with regard to missions" — so it concerns being sent, not general submission, and the Complementary Norms carry it forward as a standing readiness to be sent anywhere. In practice this means a Jesuit may be assigned by his own superiors or sent by the pope, and neither route involves the community he leaves or the one he joins.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part VII ch. 1, with note [529] C on the scope of the fourth vow
  • governing document Complementary Norms 304 §1, on the spirit of the fourth vow

Employer of record

The national body

The order, in every sense the field asks about — it admits, forms, assigns, maintains, receives what the member earns, and may dismiss him. The relationship is profession rather than employment, and where a Jesuit works for an institution the order does not own, that institution is not his employer in any sense that would let it hire or keep him.

Removal

The Constitutions devote a whole Part to dismissal — who may be dismissed and by whom, the causes, the manner, and the order's way of dealing with those who leave — which is itself a structural fact worth noting, since several bodies profiled on this site publish no removal procedure at all. The detailed provisions were not read for this profile and are not summarised here.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part II, chs. 1-4, on dismissal

Security of tenure

Not established.Not researched. Profession is a lifelong bond and the order undertakes the member's support, but the canonical protections attaching to that were not examined.

Governance

The legislative body

A General Congregation, which elects the Superior General and decides other matters referred to it, and which the Constitutions expect to meet rarely — the text observes that congregations "will occur less frequently if the superior general holds office for life," since most are convoked to elect one. The Complementary Norms are themselves the product of these congregations, which is how a sixteenth-century constitution has been kept operative without being replaced.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part VIII chs. 2-7, and note [722]

Who oversees the congregation

The institute's own superiors

A Superior General elected for life, and the Constitutions argue the case rather than merely asserting it. Given a choice between a fixed term and a whole life, "his election will be for life and not for a fixed period," on the grounds that experience in government, knowledge of the individual members, and established authority among them all aid the office. The accompanying notes add three further reasons: that ambition, "the pestilence of such offices," is banished further than under periodic election; that it is easier to find one capable person than many; and that the practice follows the more important offices of the day, held for life by popes, bishops, princes and lords. The text then does something the other bodies on this site rarely do — it names the objection to its own arrangement. "Certain disadvantages which could ensue from holding such a charge for life" are acknowledged, and a remedy is provided in a dedicated chapter on the authority the Society retains over its own General, with the Complementary Norms later providing for his resignation and for substitution in cases of grave and perpetual incapacity. Below the General, authority descends by delegation rather than ascending by election: provincials hold what the General communicates to them. This is therefore the most centralised arrangement on the site after the Roman Catholic diocesan structure, and it differs from that one in the crucial respect that the head is chosen by the body he governs.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part IX ch. 1 [719] with notes [720-722]
  • governing document Complementary Norms 362 and 366, on resignation of a General and substitution for grave and perpetual incapacity
  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part IX ch. 4, on the Society's provident care regarding the General

Who may plant or close a church

The order founds and closes its own houses and works under its constitutions, and needs no bishop's permission to exist in a diocese in the way a parish must be erected. It cannot erect a parish, which only the diocesan bishop may do; where it serves one, it does so on entrustment by written agreement.

Who owns the name

Not established.Whether and how the order controls the use of its name by institutions it founded was not researched, and it is a live question in the United States, where a number of universities and hospitals retain a Jesuit name and identity while being governed by independent lay boards.

Discipline

Internal to the order and exercised by its own superiors under the Constitutions, which set out causes and manner of dismissal in detail. A Jesuit is answerable to his superior, not to the bishop of the diocese where he lives — the practical consequence of incardination in the institute rather than the diocese.

Joining and leaving

How a congregation joins

Individuals are admitted, never congregations, and admission is a long process under an authority that descends from the General. The Constitutions set out an examen for candidates, impediments to admission, and a probation ordinarily exceeding two years before incorporation. Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are professed, with the fourth vow regarding missions taken by the professed.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part I and Part V [512-514]

How a congregation leaves

The governing documents provide no path

There is no congregational exit because no congregation belongs; the field is answering a question this body does not pose, and the value should be read as "not applicable." Departure of individual members is governed by the Constitutions' Part II and by canon law, neither of which was read on that point for this profile.

  • governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part II, chs. 1-4

What leaves with them

Nothing institutional. A member who leaves does not take a share of the order's goods, having acquired nothing for himself while professed; the Constitutions devote a chapter to the order's way of dealing with those who depart, which was not read here.

When the body removes a congregation

Dismissal of members is provided for in detail; the suppression of a house or province, and the authority competent to order it, were not established here. What can be said is that a diocesan bishop is not that authority — he may end an entrustment and an appointment, but not the order's own institutions.

Legal form

Corporate structure

Not established.How American provinces of the order are incorporated under state law, and how canonical ownership maps onto civil title for its universities and hospitals, was not established. It is the same canon/civil question the diocesan profile treats as a headline finding, and here it is complicated further by the transfer of many sponsored institutions to independent lay boards.

Tax status

Not established.Not established.

Liability

Not established.Not researched. The separateness of orders from dioceses has been consequential in American litigation, and the question deserves proper sourcing rather than a summary.

Further reading

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