Background
Peter Jan Beckx was born at Sichem in Belgium on the 8th of February 1795.
Peter Jan Beckx was born at Sichem in Belgium on the 8th of February 1795.
Beckx did his schooling in Testelt and then in the municipal school of Aarschot. In 1815 he entered the seminary of Mechelen in order to follow the course of studies leading to the priesthood and was ordained priest in Mechelen on March 6, 1819.
Peter entered the novitiate of the order at Hildesheim in 1819. His first important post was as procurator for the province of Austria, 1847; next year he became rector of the Jesuit college at Louvain, and, after serving as secretary to the provincials of Belgium and Austria, was elected head of the order in 1853. His tenure of office was marked by an increased zeal for missions in Protestant lands, and by the removal of the society's headquarters from Rome to Fiesole near Florence in 1870. His chief literary work was the often-translated Month of Mary (Vienna, 1843). He retired in September 1883, being succeeded by Anthony M. Anderledy, a Swiss, who had seen service in the United States. He died at Rome on the 4th of March 1887.