A Long and Varied Presence: Jesuits in East Africa

Abstract

In his fiery zeal for the missions, St Ignatius of Loyola offered himself to go and work in Ethiopia. When, as General of the Society, he could not do this in person, he accepted to create the Province of Ethiopia, to which he assigned fifteen Jesuits in as early as 1553. This became one of the first Jesuit missions to Africa. It now forms part of the Society's history in the territory covered by the Eastern Africa Province. This province is currently coterminous with the geopolitical jurisdictions of Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. It is a vast apostolic field of 5,402,966 km2 (larger than the Indian sub-continent), which is inhabited by about 247,764,600 souls.