1773

Pope Clement XIV signes a document to suppress the Jesuit Order. The Congregations, by the order of the same pope, become one of the normal works of the universal Church. In the eighteenth century membership increases vastly, from 2500 groups to 80.000. The consequence is a diminishment in fervour and practice. The spiritual life of the members and the social concern for the rejected of society is reduced to pious practices and annual and symbolic events. The Marian Congregations have become a pious mass movement, different from what Ignatius or Jean Leunis or Aquaviva had meant it to be.