Franz Jalics

Franz Jalics S.J. (Jálics Ferenc; 16 November 1927 – 13 February 2021) was a Hungarian-born Jesuit priest and author of books on Christian spirituality. Jalics was born in Budapest, Hungary. At a young age, he attended a school for cadets. He had a key spiritual experience while stationed in Germany, and after the Second World War, in 1947 he joined the Jesuit order. He studied philosophy in Germany, and later in Belgium. In 1956, he was sent to Chile, and one year later to Buenos Aires, to continue his studies. After being ordained as a Roman Catholic priest, he stayed in Argentina, and later became a professor of theology and the spiritual director of young Jesuits. He left South-America in 1977, moved first to the USA, and then in 1978 to Gries, Germany, where he gave contemplative retreats. He developed a special method of Christian meditation combining elements of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola with Jesus Prayer. Until 2004, he was the director of Haus Gries, the retreat centre he had founded in Wilhelmsthal, Upper Franconia. In 2017, he moved back to Budapest, where he died from COVID-19 complications on 13 February 2021, aged 93. While doing social work in Argentina in 1976 during the Dirty War in a poor neighborhood, Jalics and Orlando Yorio were captured by a death squad, abducted, and held captive for five months. Jesuit Father General Pedro Arrupe in Rome was informed by letter during the abduction. Both Jalics and Orlando Yorio left the Jesuit Order, but were later offered reinstatement to it: Jalics accepted but Yorio did not. On 15 April 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J.—then the Archbishop of Buenos Aires (and who became Pope Francis in 2013)—as superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina, accusing him of involvement in the kidnapping. On 15 March 2013, Fr.