The S.S. organization had been built up by Himmler on the principles of the Order of the Jesuits. The service statutes and spiritual exercises presented by Ignatius Loyola formed a pattern which Himmler assiduously tried to copy.

From Walter Schellenberg's memoirs entitled "The Labyrinth." Schellenberg was the Counterintelligence Chief for Adolf Hitler during World War II.

And Himmler was a devout Roman Catholic as a child whose father was very strict. He embraced the romanticism of Loyola (founder of Jesuit order) as an adult and was also into the occult.