In Francis, Benedict XVI and John-Paul II, the Roman Catholic Church has experienced three very different Popes. Each, though, has spoken repeatedly about the significance of Europe for the contemporary Church. Unsurprisingly, their assessments of this significance has been different, as Frank Turner shows here.

Referenda, such as the recent vote in Britain about the country’s continued membership of the European Union, risk promoting simple answers to questions of great complexity. This can seem very far from the nuanced processes of Ignatian discernment. Philip Endean argues here, though, that the UK referendum result reveals attitudes calling for just such a discerning approach.

Many European societies are characterized by pluralism, the more-or-less peaceful co-existence of people of many different religions, ethnic backgrounds, political outlooks and systems of belief. This can be a challenge to the Christian Church, formerly dominant throughout the continent. McKenna here presents a positive view of the Church’s role in the pluralistic Europe of today.

Living Together with Muslims in Europe and Overcoming Fear: A 'Spiritual Exercise’

Although Christians and Muslims have lived alongside each other in Europe for centuries, mass immigration of Muslims from other parts of the world in recent decades has highlighted the challenges that such proximity can present. Balhan here outlines a ‘spiritual exercise’ that can be used to face up to and explore such challenges.

The loss of Christianity’s political and cultural dominance in Europe has led many to describe the continent as ‘post-Christian’. In Melloni’s view, the Church has left a legacy of spirituality that still has the potential to offer a powerful response to the needs of Europe’s citizens, even where the institutions that one enshrined this spirituality are rejected.

Pope Francis has described himself as one ‘called from the ends of the earth’ to the papacy. As an outsider, he has a particular view of both Europe’s current spiritual crisis and of how this crisis might be met. According to Maillard, Francis thinks that finding a just response to the needs of refugees could be an important part of this response.

‘O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!’ These words of the Scottish poet Robert Burns apply well to this article, in which George Pattery, a former Jesuit Provincial in India, offers a view of European spirituality as it appears from a part of the world with very different, rich and varied spiritual traditions.

2016 marks the seventh centenary of the death of the lay Spanish Catalan philosopher and theologian Ramon Llull. Here, Nicolau Coll traces themes of dialogue and reconciliation which run through his published works. Growing out of his contact with Jews and Muslims, the ideas remain relevant to a continent in which dialogue between different faiths has a vital importance.

Faesen’s article starts by making a distinction between spirituality and its history. He believes that the latter has a great contemporary importance since ‘this history helps us to pay attention to the genuine encounter between God as God and the human person as human’. It is this encounter, in its turn, which lies at the heart of the Christian humanism that Europe spread throughout the world.

It is widely recognised that the understanding of St Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises has been transformed in the last five decades. Here Mark Rotsaert traces elements of this evolution as it has developed in a European context, at the levels of both theory and practice. He pays particular attention to currents of mysticism in the thought of Ignatius.

Pedro de Ribadeneira, Treatise on the Governance of St Ignatius of Loyola, translated by Joseph A. Munitiz SJ

FEW OF THE EARLY Jesuits knew their founder as well as Pedro de Ribadeneira (1526-1611). He met Ignatius while still in his teens, and outlived him by more than fifty years. Ribadeneira wrote the classic biography of Ignatius, and on his death a sketch for a further account of Ignatius' mode of government was found among his papers. This remained unpublished until, in the nineteenth century, it was added to the Spanish edition of the biography. An English version was badly needed as few texts are so revealing or so relevant about Ignatius. Ignatius himself appears with his charismatic gifts and foibles, offering characteristically formulated guidelines-inspired by great respect for individuals but exigent in the high ideals they embody. Some features are proposed 'for admiration rather than for imitation', but most Jesuits, both those required to govern and those governed, can learn much from all of them. And the same is true not just for members of the Society of Jesus but for all involved in governance, religious or other.

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