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Pedro Arrupe issued the following letter to the whole of the Society of Jesus in March 1977. Rutilio Grande was assassinated earlier that month, becoming the fifth Jesuit martyred in less than a year. These five men were “of average human gifts, leading obscure lives, more or less unrecognized, dwelling in small villages and totally […]

Journalist Renzo Giacomelli of the Vatican Radio Station conducted an interview with Pedro Arrupe in December 1976. A transcript of that exchange appears below. Among the topics considered is how men and women from religious orders can evangelize and develop man, especially when, as Giacomelli notes, “the crisis of religious institutes is widespread and profound.”

The 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus ended on March 7, 1975, having met for 96 days and approved 16 decrees. Arguably the most important of these decrees was Decree 4: “Our Mission Today,” one of four decrees focused on the “Society’s Response to the Challenges of Our Age.” The Jesuits’ Superior General,

On January 15, 1977, Pedro Arrupe delivered the following homily at the Mass marking his 50th anniversary as a member of the Society of Jesus. Such occasion, the Jesuits’ superior general notes, often marks the “dialectic between a man’s smallness and limitations and the greatness of the Creator.” Yet, each individual has his own story.

In the text below, from his second of two addresses to the Synod of Bishops on Catechesis in October 1977, Superior General Pedro Arrupe speaks on the “enormous field … a large segment of humanity” that is open to catechesis by the Catholic Church when compared to the “very small remnant” of those who actually

Pedro Arrupe had an extended interview with the Roman paper Avvenire in November 1977, nearly three years after Pope Paul VI told the delegates of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus that their order was “at the vanguard of that interior renewal which the Church is facing in this secularized world.” The

To mark his 70th birthday in 1977, Superior General Pedro Arrupe conducted a brief interview with the Vatican Radio Station (operated since its establishment in 1931 by the Jesuits). In the text appearing below, Arrupe explains why he remains an “incorrigible optimist,” what changes might be necessary given the decrease of Jesuit vocation, and what

Pedro Arrupe wrote a letter to all members of the Society of Jesus on the issue of inculturation. With the letter, issued on the Solemnity of Pentecost in 1978 and appearing below, Arrupe wished for his fellow Jesuits to “be vitally aware of the capital importance of inculturation for our mission of defense and propagation

Pedro Arrupe delivered a stirring and personal address to the celebration hosted by the Eucharistic Youth Movement in September 1979. In the edited text below, Arrupe provides examples of his own experiences of the Eucharist—from witnessing a miracle at Lourdes to witnessing the aftermath of the atomic explosion in Hiroshima. “Our Lord, through contact with

In April 1978, sixteen Jesuit scientists in India, encouraged by Pedro Arrupe’s letter on the Intellectual Apostolate, gathered in Bangalore for a two-day seminar on their work’s significance within the Society of Jesus. At the event, Casimir Gnanadickam, a Jesuit chemist, delivered the keynote address. The meeting led to the establishment of a secretariate for