Resumen de Wayward Leadership and the Breakdown of Reform on the Failed Jesuit Mission to the Maronites, 1577-1579
In 1578, at the behest of Syriac Maronite Patriarch Mihail ar-Ruzzy, Pope Gregory XIII sent three Jesuits to Lebanon to assist the Maronites in ecclesiastical reform. However, the mission’s superior, Tommaso Raggio, desired to leave Lebanon, insulted Mihail, and did little to help the Maronites. Within a year of arriving, Raggio was recalled. The mission’s failure due to Raggio’s actions, especially when compared to subsequent successful missions, illuminates three aspects of Catholic missionary activity. First, missionaries and their superiors had to agree on a given mission’s specific objectives. Second, successful missions required missionaries who understood the world in which they found themselves. Third, evangelization was a negotiated process between the clergy and the faithful that often hinged on whether communities felt that missionaries were serving their needs. These three issues point to early modern missionary Catholicism’s need to be conciliatory rather than rigid in its evangelizing and reform efforts.
