Jesuit priest Ferenc Jálics, author of books on Christian spirituality and the founder of the school of contemplative worship, died at the age of 94 in Budapest on Saturday, the Hungarian Society of Jesus said on its website.
Ferenc Jálics was born in Budapest in 1927. After attending military school in Kőszeg, he was sent to Nuremberg towards the end of the Second World War. He returned to Hungary in 1946, where he joined the Jesuit order. Due to the Communist dictatorship, he had to leave the country along with many other young Jesuits two years later, first studying in Germany before graduating in philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
In 1956, the order sent him to Chile, then a year later to Argentina, where he was ordained a priest in 1959. He became a professor of theology and the spiritual director of young Jesuits. While doing social work in Argentina in 1976, he was abducted along with a Jesuit companion and held captive for five months. In 1977, he moved to the US, and a year later to Germany. In 1984, he founded his retreat house in Gries, which became a place of pilgrimage for Christians looking for contemplation. He returned to Hungary in 2017.
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