Switzerland: The Jesuit Magazine “Choisir” Will Cease Publication at the End of 2022

Times and cultural habits are changing, stated Fr. Pierre Emonet sj and Lucienne Bittar, respectively director and editor-in-chief.

The 2016 transition from a monthly publication to a quarterly publication, with two thematic files per edition, and the development of the site which offers unpublished articles, were not enough to relaunch subscriptions, they explained.

A special edition has been announced for November 2022. It will present a retrospective and an analysis of the challenges facing the Church and society, explains Lucienne Bittar to the Swiss agency cath.ch. “It should make it possible to consider the developments of the last decades, in a variety of areas.” The website jesuites.ch will continue its development and will continue to offer in-depth articles.

It is “the end of a great adventure,” write the authors of the press release, where the major work of the Jesuits of French-speaking Switzerland, Choisir, imposed itself for 63 years in the media landscape “driven by the same objectives which guided its founders in 1959: to offer readers a publication of Christian inspiration immersed in the debates of the world, tracing paths of research, and promoting dialogue.”

The disappearance of the magazine is “a hard blow,” confides the editor-in-chief. “With the suppression of other media and especially Christian-oriented television broadcasts, I have the impression that the surge of creativity and dynamism that followed Vatican II is stalling.” It is the turning of a page of the history of the Society of Jesus in French-speaking Switzerland.