The name “Societas Jesu” had been born by a military order approved and recommended by Pius II in 1450, the purpose of which was to fight against the Turks and aid in spreading the Christian faith. The early Jesuits were sent by Ignatius first to pagan lands or to Catholic countries; to Protestant countries only at the special request of the pope and to Germany, the cradle-land of the Reformation, at the urgent solicitation of the imperial ambassador.
Society of Jesus, religious order of the Roman Catholic Church. Its members are called Jesuits. St. Ignatius of Loyola, its founder, named it Compañia de Jesús [Span.,=(military) company of Jesus]; in Latin it is Societas Jesu (abbr. S.J.). Today the society numbers about 19,000 members; in the United States, where there were approximately 2,900 Jesuits in 2007, there are many Jesuit schools and colleges (e.g., Georgetown, Fordham, and St. Louis universities).
The war Ignatius saw was the war against Lucifer, chief of the fallen angels, who roamed the human environment seeking to destroy–whether by the homicide of war, by the destruction of religious culture, or by the degradation of poverty, injustice, and suffering–the image of God and the grace of Christ in the souls of men and women everywhere. As Lucifer’s war against Christ and his grace and salvation was universal, so the war against Lucifer and his followers had to be correspondingly universal.