Pedro Arrupe - Father General

Father General

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. 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." 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. 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.