The five Jesuit provincials in Canada and the United States announced the reduction of the number of novitiates in the two nations from five to two.
One will be based in Culver City, California; the other, in Detroit, Michigan.
“Running five novitiates takes an awful lot of Jesuit staff of very good people,” said Father Joseph Daoust, S.J., superior of the Detroit Jesuit community. “You have to have three or four Jesuits in each of the novitiates, who usually are more senior Jesuits who serve as the formators of the novices. If we could put the novices in only two novitiates rather than five, we would save an awful lot of very valuable manpower for other works of the Society of Jesus.”