Jesuits now prevail in Jeppe’s house
OUTWARD-LOOKING: SCHOLARLY ORDER OF CATHOLIC CHURCH THAT ENGAGES WITH WORLD
Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and their surrounds, curious to feel them out. This week it’s Jeppe and the Jesuits.
Father Russell Pollitt has just shaken the pope’s hand again. But that was in Italy, 10 air hours from the house that Julius Gottlieb Ferdinand Jeppe built for himself in about 1910 and in which Pollitt resides along with nine other Jesuits.
Next door is another Jeppe residence. The View, now a hotel, was originally commissioned to house Jeppe’s eldest daughter.
We stand on a flower-bed wall gazing past it at the view it didn’t have in her day of Joburg’s iconic city centre.
Jeppe was knighted a dozen years after building here for pioneering the development of the city.
This residence is now called St Ignatius House, after the long-suffering Basque priest who founded the Society of Jesu or the Jesuits.
Pollitt, director of the Jesuit Institute, is keen to dispel any ideas that Jesuits are cloistered from the world.
They aren’t monks and they see themselves as engaged with all the peoples of the world for the “common good” of everyone: people of other religions, audiences of the media.
Pollitt is a columnist, a radio regular, a podcaster and a liker of Heather’s blog. The Jesuits here are involved with the Kathrada Foundation. They launched Greg Marinovich’s book on Marikana on these premises. Here there is a suitable space, with a recording studio and even a bar that the institute inherited.
Where a garden shed once stood there is now a library I love, fronted by a two-storey cross of window glass. Today I see that the person with the good view of it is Robert Whitehead, the actor. His house is right up close. Pollitt says another good viewing point is McDonalds nearby.
From the floors within this cosy stocked library only either the top or the bottom of the glass cross is visible. But it has a beautiful view north.
Apparently Ignatius was eager for Jesuits to open up to the outside world and it’s true the institute is very outward-looking. Pollitt sees current Jesuits as immersed in sciences and politics for the common good.
A garden avenue from Jeppe’s days features a mirrored intersection, installed by an interim owner. Pollitt growls slightly as he disses it. I think what irks him is the specific visual trick instead of general reflection.
The Jesuit Molesey Avenue. Institute, 15