Spain: Jesuit Receives Minister - Barfoot
Manresa is important to the Jesuits because their founder, St Ignatius of Loyola, spent eleven months there in 1522. This period was crucial in shaping his spiritual exercises and the foundation of the Jesuit order.
The cave of Saint Ignatius in Manresa is now an international centre of spirituality.
For financial reasons, Hereu is interested in promoting the Ignatian Way, a kind of Camino de Santiago that replicates the one that St Ignatius made from Loyola to Manresa in 1522.
Last Friday, Hereu himself inspected the last part of the route, accompanied by the highest local authorities and the heads of the Catalan Jesuits, including the delegate of the Society of Jesus in Catalonia, Father Pau Vidal Sas SJ.
One of the "exotic characteristics" of Father Vidal is that he likes to walk barefoot, informs Francesco Della Rovere on GerminansGerminavit.Blogspot.com (18 February).
He argues that he spent a few years in Africa, in refugee camps in Kenya and Sudan, where he got used to it.
To receive the socialist, the Jesuit did not change his custom and walked the streets of the city without shoes. The temperature in Manresa was about 12° C (54° F).
Della Rovere writes of Father Vidal: "I would much prefer a humble and helpful person like him, used to dealing with the poorest of the poor, to those Jesuits in suits and ties with secretaries who manage the immense properties of the Society of Jesus as if they were the CEOs of a multinational corporation."
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