The contribution of the Jesuit Fathers to Education in the Maltese Islands

Abstract

Macaulay attributes the power of the Church of Christ to its policy which he calls "the very masterpiece of human wisdom". He goes on to say that "there is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church". It is unfortunate that the historian misses the main point and ignores completely the ever-presence of the Divine Founder with His Church. Christ has promised that He is to remain with His Church till the end of time, and a tangible proof of this Divine Promise is that, in the Annals of Church History, we find that whenever the Church needed a Leader, it always found one. The name of Ignatius of Loyola shines out at a time when the Best of Peter was being tossed about by the turbulent waves of the Reformation. It was a time described by Innes as "the vortex of the struggle between the champions of a medieval papacy, the reformers who revolted together, and the reformers who were striving to purify the Church from within."