50 Years a Jesuit in 2025
Father Ronald Mercier, SJ, was the first provincial of the U.S. Central and Southern Province of the Society of Jesus, serving from 2014 to 2020. This year he celebrates 50 years as a Jesuit.
Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Fr. Mercier entered the New England Province of the Society of Jesus in 1975 after completing his undergraduate degree in Russian studies at Yale University and master’s degree in history from Columbia University. As a Jesuit, he pursued graduate studies in history and theology, earning a master’s degree in history from Harvard University (1981), a Master of Divinity (1987), Licentiate in Sacred Theology (1992) and doctorate in Christian ethics (1993) from Regis College in Toronto.
During regency, Fr. Mercier supported campus ministry and taught history and social studies at Boston College High School. He was ordained a priest in 1987 and professed his final vows in the Society of Jesus in 2003.
Father Mercier lived the Jesuit academic vocation as an instructor in theology at Regis College and St. Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto (1988–1990) and at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts (1990–1992). He was named an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Regis College in 1993 and served there as dean from 1995 to 2005. From 2002 to 2005 he was the managing editor of the Toronto Journal of Theology. After a sabbatical at the Milltown Institute in Dublin, he returned to Boston in 2006 to serve as the executive director of the Jesuit Collaborative and in the New England Province Office.
In 2010, Fr. Mercier moved to St. Louis to become an associate professor of theology at Saint Louis University and rector of the Bellarmine House of Studies, the Jesuit house of formation. In 2014 he was named provincial of the newly formed USA Central and Southern Province.
Fr. Mercier participated in the Jesuits’ General Congregations 35 and 36. He now serves as Delegate for Formation for the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, helping coordinate the various formation programs from novitiate through tertianship.
