It's not unusual to meet a Lebanese who claims to be a Jesuit; some will claim their whole family is Jesuit. What they mean, of course, is that they've attended a Jesuit grade school, high school, or university. It's a claim made with pride. Though Jesuit numbers are dwindling, their reputation stays steady in Lebanon, where Jesuits have long been a part of the scene.

Forty percent of the 6,000 students at St. Joseph's receive financial aid in their pursuit of degrees in a variety of fields, including medicine, engineering, and law.

They first arrived in Lebanon in the 1640s, establishing stations in Sidon and Tripoli and other places. These efforts ground to a halt during the Society's suppression, which began in 1773. When Jesuits returned in 1831, they started in Ghazir, to the north of Beirut, with a school that taught Arabic and Italian for students in the village. In 1875 the school moved to Beirut and became an interritual seminary, the foundation of the modern St. Joseph's University. Its school of medicine began in 1881, followed by schools of engineering and law. The latter opened in 1913 and was the only law school in Beirut for the next half-century; as a result, many past and present political figures have passed through its gates.

Those early Jesuits in Lebanon represented a variety of European origins, but France, with its role of protector of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire, soon became the main source for Jesuit recruitment for the university, which came to represent French Catholic culture against the Anglo-Saxon Presbyterianism of American University in Beirut. While Protestants tried to "enlighten" Catholics and Orthodox by making them Protestant, Jesuits tried to protect and strengthen Catholics especially by forming an educated clergy. A wealth of anecdotes attests to the historically understandable rivalry between the two religiocultural antagonists, but that it continues even today pushes it into the category of myth.

Private institutions dominate the educational scene in Lebanon. St. Joseph's, American University, and the Beirut College for Women were the main universities until the '50s, when the state university was founded. Since then, the Sunni community has established a branch of the University of Alexandria, while the Armenians and the Seventh Day Adventists have both opened colleges. Other private universities have sprouted up all over as well, many of them serving as junior colleges of sorts. The Lebanese people profit from the efforts of all of these, as the preferred formula of many parents is to give children a mixture of both private and public education.

Institute for Oriental Literature In the late nineteenth century, the reputation of the university's Jesuit orientalists and its extensive Oriental library attracted scholars from abroad for study of the history, language, and literature of the East. In 1902 the somewhat informal offerings were structured into an oriental faculty offering training in the languages, history, geography, and archaeology of the area. The institute and its library attract students and researchers working on master's degrees and doctorates from Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and on occasion North Africa. The library remains one of the most complete in the area, especially for Arabic publications of the early twentieth century.

The University

The 24 Jesuits at St. Joseph's serve as administrators, campus ministers, and teachers of engineering, theology, and medicine, among other fields. The university, now a separate corporation, has all faculties under a central administration that assures its existence even with a diminution of Jesuits. Most of the deans of faculties and directors of institutes are lay people. And in the procession of deans, women took their place as deans of the law, medicine, and nursing schools, an innovation in the area.

Students at the School for Translation and Interpreting become adept at the languages important in their area of the world: French, English, and Arabic.

Just when things were put into proper form, the Lebanese war broke out in 1975 and dragged on for some fifteen years. If the Society had wanted to bow out, that would have been the time. But as St. Joseph's was the only Jesuit university in the region after the closure of Al-Hikma University in Baghdad in 1968 (see the article Fadheria), the general sentiment among the Jesuits was that they should remain.

The war left its mark. Physical damage was repaired, but the loss of outstanding professors was more difficult to make up. Some, however, did find their way back to classrooms at St. Joseph's, and there is now a new generation stepping in.

Surprisingly, the student body never dwindled significantly during the hostilities, and there was a remarkable rise in the percentage of women students enrolling. The university experienced growth in other areas as well; it was during this time the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences and the School for Translation and Interpreting were established. When fighting made travel to Beirut difficult, at times impossible, the university set up satellite centers, south in Sidon, north in Tripoli, and east in Zahle, so students could continue studies. These campuses, temporary fixes to a problem, have become permanent fixtures.

The Theatre Workshop is part of the university's Institute for Audio-Visual and Scenic Studies. A recent graduate of the Institute won a prize for her entry at the Athens Film Festival.

The Students

St. Joseph's students, overwhelmingly Lebanese, hail from all parts of the country; about 20 percent of them at the Beirut campus are Muslim, and that percentage is higher at the campuses in Sidon and Tripoli. Because St. Joseph's has no dorms, the majority live with relatives, rent rooms, or live in numerous student hostels nearby. They come to the campus church on Sundays and feast days, but there is always a bit of tension between the university parish and the local Maronite, Melkite, and Orthodox parishes.

St. Joseph's Social Services Office and the campus ministers help maintain the school's Jesuit heritage of developing men and women for others. Programs give students the opportunity to tutor grade schoolers, to work with the handicapped in the Foi et Lumiere movement, where most of the chaplains are Jesuits, and to volunteer time, two to three weeks at a crack, at summer camps for needy children.

The Country

Although its recent history has been violent and divisive, Lebanon is a land where traditionally different cultures and religions and points of view have managed to get along. Christians are a large minority today, 38 percent of the population (most of the rest are Sunni or Shiite Muslims), and most of these Christians are Maronite Catholics. St. Joseph's University is an important component of the Christian identity of Lebanon.

St. Joseph's seeks to integrate students into a pluralistic culture that respects the traditions of its people, traditions that have lived there for centuries or millennia. According to Fr. Jean Dalmais, superior of the Jesuit community at St. Joseph's and chaplain for university pastoral services, "the role of Christian education is to form true Lebanese citizens animated by the spirit of Christ and of the Gospel."

The goal of such education is not simply to educate individuals who can defend and safeguard their particular heritage, but something more dynamic: "to form people who dynamically live their faith, who receive life from this faith, believers who respect the beliefs and religious values of others," says Dalmais.

The demands on such educated Christians are not easy. Dalmais sees the struggle, however, as vital to a viable Lebanon of the future: Christians have the duty, he says, to reclaim the status of first-class citizens and be willing to grant that to others. As long as any one group feels like or is treated like just a minority, Lebanon will never be able to build a balanced society. "It is essential to purify every authentic religious value of the community and to banish all fanaticism invoked in the name of religion."

That is a tall order but a necessary quest. Respectful pluralism is essential to Lebanon's national identity: "Lebanon would no longer be Lebanon if it stopped being a place of encounter, of exchange, of dialogue, of respect for different persons, of freedom of expression, of cultural and religious pluralism," says Dalmais.