Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. (November 14, 1907 – February 5, 1991) (full name, Pedro de Arrupe y Gondra) was the twenty eighth Superior General (1965–83) of the Society of Jesus. He was born in Bilbao, Spain.
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Pedro Arrupe attended school at the Santiago Apostol High School in Bilbao. Later he moved to Madrid to attend the Medical School of the Universidad Complutense. There he met Severo Ochoa, who later won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. One of his teachers was Juan Negrín, a pioneer in physiology, who would become Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic during the Civil War (1936–1939). After some years of medical training, Pedro Arrupe joined the Jesuits in 1927 but was unable to pursue his studies for the Ministerial Priesthood in Spain due to the Order having been expelled by the Republican government of 1932. Accordingly, the young Arrupe did his studies in the Netherlands and Belgium before being ordained in 1936. Following his ordination to the Presbyterate, Fr. Arrupe was sent to the United States of America where he completed a doctorate in Medical Ethics. [1]
After his doctorate, Fr. Arrupe was sent to work as a missionary in Japan. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in Hawaii on December 7th 1941, it was December 8th in Japan. Fr. Arrupe was celebrating the Eucharist for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception when he was arrested and imprisoned for a time, being suspected of espionage. On Christmas Eve, Fr. Arrupe heard people gathering outside his cell door and presumed that the time for him to be executed had arrived. However, to his utter surprise, he discovered that some fellow Christians, ignoring all danger, had come to sing him Christmas carols. Upon this realisation, Arrupe recalled that he burst into tears.[2] His attitude of profound prayer (he would later describe this as one of his most transforming spiritual periods), and his lack of offensive behaviour gained him the respect of his jailors and judges, and he was set free within a month.
Fr. Arrupe was appointed Jesuit superior and novice master in Japan in 1942 and was living in suburban Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell in August 1945. He was one of 8 Jesuits who were physically located within the blast zone of the bomb when it occurred, and all 8 survived the destruction. Fr. Arrupe described that event as "a permanent experience outside of history, engraved on my memory.” [3]Father Arrupe used his medical skills to help those who were wounded or dying. The Jesuit novitiate was converted into a make-shift hospital where between 150-200 people received care . Arrupe recalled “The chapel, half destroyed, was overflowing with the wounded, who were lying on the floor very near to one another, suffering terribly, twisted with pain.” [4]In 1958, Fr. Arrupe was appointed the first Jesuit provincial for Japan, a position he held until being elected Father General in 1965.
Prior to being elected Father General, Arrupe made a visit to Latin America and, on one occasion, was celebrating the Eucharist in a suburban slum. He was deeply moved at the devotion and respect the people had for Christ in the midst of their abject poverty. After the service, a man invited Fr. Arrupe to his hovel, where he told him that he was so grateful for his visit and that he wanted to share the only gift he had, that of watching the setting sun together. Fr. Arrupe reflected, “He gave me his hand. As I was leaving, I thought: ‘I have met very few hearts that are so kind.’”[5]
At the thirty-first General Congregation (GC XXXI) of the Society of Jesus in 1965, he was elected the order's twenty-eighth Father General, and served in that post until1983. Pedro Arrupe was only the second Basque to be Father General, the first being the founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola himself.[6] Fr. Vinnie O'Keefe, a friend and advisor to Arrupe, says Arrupe was "a second Ignatius of Loyola, a refounder of the Society in the light of Vatican II." The defining moment of Fr. Arrupe's leadership of the Jesuits was probably the thirty-second General Congregation (GC XXXII), which convened in 1975.
Fr. Arrupe's dream of working for the poor was crystallised in the document (Decree 4), Our Mission Today: the Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice. Of GC XXXII. Part of the 4th Decree states: “Our faith in Jesus Christ and our mission to proclaim the Gospel demand of us a commitment to promote justice and enter into solidarity with the voiceless and the powerless."[7] Thus, the decree basically defined all the work of the Jesuits as having an essential focus on the promotion of social justice as well as the Catholic faith.
Fr. Arrupe was keenly aware that, in the political climate of the 1970s, the Jesuits’ commitment to working for social justice would bring great hardship and suffering, particularly in those Latin American countries which were not only fascist, but supported by the United States as a means of holding back the perceived threat of Communism. [8][9] For the Jesuits to tie their work so explicitly to the promotion of justice was a very bold move, and some felt it overly politicised the Society. The decree was so hotly debated that it was not voted on until the last day of the Congregation, March 7, 1975, when it was accepted, after a period of intense discussion, by an overwhelming majority of delegates.
After the changes following Vatican II (1962–1965), there was tension within the Society as to how the life of a Jesuit was to be lived. Whilst most religious orders in the Catholic Church have a particular focus (e.g. Redemptorists conduct retreats and the Alexians care for the sick) the Society has always used the talents of its members and encouraged them to be expressed, believing that God can be glorified in this manner; thus Jesuits are theologians, artists, writers, counsellors, scientists, missionaries, teachers, musicians amongst a whole host of other professions. This has always made it challenging for them to establish a single focus. [10]
In the late 1960s and into the 1970s some theologians in Latin America became increasingly involved in the political sphere, sometimes adopting positions which others perceived as being Marxist. Many Jesuits in Latin America, aware that the Church had previously appeared to accept, and even support, inequality in the region, were at the forefront of this movement. The thinking that grew out of what they experienced in their work with the poor was called liberation theology and concentrated on seeing Christ as the liberator, not only from sin, but from all forms of oppression.
In its most extreme manifestations, liberation theology seemed to those in the Roman Curia, to subordinate the message of the Gospel to political revolution, making the former simply a means to achieve the latter. Fr. Arrupe himself was even accused of leading the Jesuits astray.[11] The perception that there was a fundamental confusion between hope for equality in the present world and hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God led to the condemnation of liberation theology by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the 1980s in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Despite these criticisms, the Jesuits undoubtedly made great sacrifices for their beliefs and immense dedication to the poor and dispossessed. On June 20, 1977 the White Warriors Union death squad threatened to kill all of the 47 Jesuits serving in El Salvador unless they abandoned their work with the poor, and left the country within a month. After consulting with the Jesuit community in El Salvador, Fr. Arrupe replied, "They may end up as martyrs, but my priests are not going to leave because they are with the people." A few months earlier, Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande, a proponent of liberation theology, had been assassinated in El Salvador.
On 16 November 1989, six Jesuits (Ignacio Ellacuría, Armando Lopez, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Segundo Montes and Juan Ramon Moreno, along with their housekeeper (Julia Elba Ramos) and her daughter (Cecilia), were murdered at the Jesuit University of Central America . Others also suffered martyrdom because they empowered the poor and dispossessed to move for change: the chief bishop in El Salvador Archbishop Óscar Romero (though conservative in respect to religion) was gunned down whilst celebrating the Eucharist on 24 March 1980. Lay missionary Jean Donovan, Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel and Maryknoll sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford were beaten, raped and murdered by non-uniformed members of the Salvadoran National Guard on 2 December 1980. They joined some 75,000 Salvadorans who were killed during this troubled period. All the while, Fr. Arrupe continued to support and pray for those people who were willing to lay down their lives to help the poor initiate change.[12]
On August 7, 1981, after a long and tiring trip throughout the Far East, Fr. Arrupe suffered a stroke just after his aeroplane landed at Rome's Fiumicino Airport. He was paralysed on his right side and was able to speak only a few words. This ability gradually deteriorated until he was completely mute. From that time on he lived in the infirmary at the Jesuit Motherhouse. He was the first Jesuit Superior-General to resign instead of remaining in office until his death. Pope John Paul II appointed Fr. Paolo Dezza as his personal delegate and interim Father General of the Society, passing over Fr. Arrupe’ s own choice of vicar general. There was a wave of resentment in the Society as this was seen as unwarranted papal interference in Jesuit affairs. For his part, Fr. Arrupe never expressed any disagreement or resentment.[13] In 1983, Fr. Dezza called the thirty-third General Congregation to deal with the resignation of Arrupe and the election of a successor. Fr. Arrupe's resignation was accepted on September 3, 1983 during the Congregation and it proceeded to elect Fr. Peter Hans Kolvenbach as Father General. During the opening Session of the Congregation Fr. Arrupe was wheeled into the hall, and a prayer which he had written was read out.
During his ten long and silent years in the infirmary, praying for the Society, Fr. Arrupe received many and frequent well-wishers among whom Pope John Paul II was the most distinguished.
Fr. Pedro Arrupe of the Society of Jesus, died on February 5, 1991 in his 84th year. His funeral was held in the Church of the Gesu, Rome and was attended by crowds that filled the piazza outside the church. Also in attendance were 10 cardinals, 20 bishops, Giulio Andreotti the Prime Minister of Italy as well as other religious and civil dignitaries. His body, first interred in the Jesuit Mausoleum at Campo Verano, was brought back into the Church of the Gesu where it lies in a side chapel.
Numerous buildings, schools and Jesuit communities have been named after Pedro Arrupe. Among them include:
- A residence hall at the University of San Francisco- A building in Fairfield College Preparatory School, Connecticut- The main auditorium at the ITESO, a Jesuit university in Guadalajara, Mexico- Arrupe Jesuit High Schoolin Denver, Colorado- The middle school of Boston College High School, was named the "Arrupe Division" in 2007 - The Jesuit Formation College in Zimbabweis known as Arrupe College - A school in Philippinesis named Pedro Arrupe Academy. - The neighborhood partnership program named the Arrupe House at Saint Ignatius High Schoolin Cleveland, Ohio.
| Preceded by Jean-Baptiste Janssens |
Superior General of the Society of Jesus 1965–1983 |
Succeeded by Peter Hans Kolvenbach |