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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.

At the International Colloquium of Jesuit Alumni held in Padua in August 1977, Pedro Arrupe delivered the following address. The frank remarks begin with the admission of the Superior General of the Society of Jesus that, while he feels “very much whatever touches the alumni, both as individuals and as a body,” there have been

The Second Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops took place in Rome in 1971, gathered to consider two topics: the ministerial priesthood and justice in the world. On the latter topic, a report on justice and peace was published in spring of 1972. Pedro Arrupe, in his positions as the Superior General of the

In August 1979, some 400 delegates of various associations representing former students of Jesuit schools in Europe met in Ghent, Belgium to explore “Christianity and the Future of Europe” in the fields of ethics, economic and social life, formation and politics. Father Arrupe, who was traveling in Latin America at the time of the meeting,

The following is a partial transcript—as translated by Jerome Aixala and published by Jesuit Sources—of an interview Pedro Arrupe had an Italian television program “Encounter” in September 1975. Among the interviewer’s admittedly “provocative questions” to the Jesuits’ superior general are those on Arrupe’s own personal history (he provides a vivid account of the bombings and

Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus on July 21, 1773. In the preceding decades, the Jesuits had suffered expulsions from the Catholic empires of Portugal (1759), France (1764), and Spain (1767), where they had become handy scapegoats for kings or princes under civic pressure. In Portugal, for example, charges against the Society included