Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Of all the orders, the most successful in gaining that all-important proximity to sovereign power was the Society of Jesus. By the end of the seventeenth century most of the Catholic rulers of Europe had Jesuits as their confessors. Through their control of most universities and many secondary schools, the Jesuits were also well-placed to influence the elites in a more indirect fashion. . . . In 1773 Clement XIV abandoned the protracted rear-guard action he had been fighting since his election in 1769 and issued the Bull Dominus ac Redemptor, in which he announced: ‘We dissolve, suppress, extinguish, and abolish the said Society.’ With varying degrees of enthusiasm, the Catholic powers moved to confiscate its assets and expel its members. Ironically, the ex-Jesuits now found refuge in non-Catholic countries such as Prussia and Russia, whose enlightened rulers used them to educate their Catholic minorities." [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 383]