Giovanni Paolo Oliva

Giovanni Paolo Oliva (4 October 1600 – 26 November 1681) was the eleventh Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

His chief aim was to remove all causes of dissension and of personal friction between his institute and other religious orders, towards which he showed himself most reverent and yielding.

His book of forty-odd sermons for Lent, and his work of six folio volumes, In Selecta Scripturae Loca Ethicae Commentationes, demonstrate his scholarship and piety.

In 1678 the English informer Titus Oates named him as one of the ringleaders of the Popish Plot, a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II of England, which in fact was entirely Oates' own fabrication.

In addition, he took a strong view of the unlawfulness of attempting to overthrow a sovereign ruler, stating that if any Jesuits had engaged in such actions (while stressing that he thought it most improbable that they had) they deserved to suffer the full penalties of the law.