JESUITICA: Superlative academic

When you read that Miquel Batllori i Munné SJ was awarded eleven honorary doctorates in one day, you could be tempted to think that he was an establishment figure who was never  “on the outside”. You’d be wrong. He was a solitary Jesuit protester after Franco’s bombing of Barcelona. His Jesuit superiors were uncomfortable with him, a brilliant Catalan who was passionately opposed to Franco. During that regime, Batllori retained contacts with the clandestine Christian-Democrat opposition and the exiled Catalans. He became interested in the Vatican only after the Second Vatican Council. He directed the Archivum Historicum SJ, lectured in the Gregorian University, and published over 200 works of solid historical research. So in a single ceremony each of the eleven Catalan universities presented the 80-year-old with an honorary doctorate.