The Jesuit order has elected a little-known Spanish priest with wide Asian experience and liberal views as its leader, dubbed "The Black Pope".

After four days of prayer in a secret conclave Father Adolfo Nicolas, 71, moderator of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania, was elected superior general of the Society of Jesus by 217 voting delegates in Rome representing the order's 20,000 members worldwide. He succeeds Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, 79, who asked the Pope if he could step down because of his age. Jesuit superior generals normally serve for life.

Father Nicolas, who was not on most observers' short lists, was ordained to the priesthood in Tokyo and is the former Jesuit provincial of Japan. He also had served as director of the East Asian Pastoral Institute in Manila. Pope Benedict XVI approved the choice before it was announced.

In an interview last month December in Australia Father Nicolas said "I have a feeling, still imprecise and difficult to define, that there is something important in our religious life that needs attention and is not getting it. We have certainly been diligent in addressing our problems whenever we have seen them but the uneasiness in the society and in the church has not disappeared......How come we elicit so much admiration and so little following?.

He said he hoped the Jesuit conclave, properly called the General Congregation, would initiate "a process of dynamic and open reflection on our religious life that might begin a process of re-creation of the society for our times, not only in the quality of our services, but also and mostly in the quality of our personal and community witness to the church and the world."

Before the vote Pope Benedict had asked the Jesuits, noted for their missionary work but also for their liberal stance, to reaffirm their "total adhesion to Catholic doctrine," on inter faith dialogue and sexual morality. The General Congregation will continue to meet for several more weeks to discuss the order's future agenda. Father Nicolas' liberal views and emphasis on local decision making and autonomy rather than centralised rule from Rome could bring him into conflict with the Vatican after a period in which Father Kolvenbach had restored good relations.

Father Nicolas is the 29th successor to St. Ignatius Loyola, the sixteenth century founder of the Society of Jesus. L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper,said Father Nicolas had been described as a man "open to dialogue." Father Nicolas has said he is wary of missionaries more concerned with imposing doctrinal orthodoxy than in "cultural dialogue with local people".

The Jesuits have long had a difficult and sometimes tense relationship with the Pope, and in the past their concern for socal justice and work among the poor of Latin America often gave rise to the suspicion in the Vatican that they supported "Marxist" liberation theology. In 1981 Pope John Paul II stepped in to directly appoint the "Black Pope" himself after the charismatic and independent minded Father Pedro Arrupe, suffered a stroke. John Paul named Father Paolo Dezza, who led the Jesuits until Father Kolvenbach's election in 1983.

The Catholic News Service said Father Nicolas, born April 29, 1936, in Palencia, Spain, entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1953. After earning a degree in philosophy in Spain, he was sent to Japan to study theology. He was ordained a priest in Tokyo in 1967.

After earning a master's degree in theology from the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he returned to Japan and taught systematic theology at Sophia University in Tokyo. In 1978-84 he was director of the East Asian Pastoral Institute in Manila. In 1991-1993 he was rector of the program for Jesuit scholastics in Japan, and in 1993 he was appointed provincial for Japan.

Before being named moderator of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania in 2004, he spent three years working in a poor immigrant parish in Tokyo, living with and ministering to Filipino and other Asian immigrants.