Pedro Arrupe
|
The Very Reverend Pedro Arrupe SJ |
|
|---|---|
| 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus | |
| Installed | 22 May 1965 |
| Term ended | 3 September 1983 |
| Predecessor | Jean-Baptiste Janssens |
| Successor | Peter Hans Kolvenbach |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1936 |
| Personal details | |
| Birth name | Pedro de Arrupe y Gondra |
| Born |
14 November 1907 Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain |
| Died | 5 February 1991 (aged 83) Rome, Italy |
| Buried | Church of the Gesù, Rome, Italy |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Alma mater | Complutense University of Madrid |
Pedro Arrupe, S.J. (14 November 1907 – 5 February 1991) was a Spanish Jesuit priest and Basque from Bilbao, Spain, who served as the twenty-eighth Superior General of the Society of Jesus (1965–83).
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, since the Order had been expelled by the Spanish Republican government (1931-1939). Accordingly, the young Arrupe did his studies in the Netherlands and Belgium before being ordained in 1936. Following his ordination to the priesthood, Arrupe was sent to the United States where he completed a doctorate in Medical Ethics.
After his doctorate, Arrupe was sent to work as a missionary in Japan. His early years as missionary were very frustrating for him. No matter what he did, what he organised, people did not attend, and few if any converted to Christianity. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in Hawaii on 7 December 1941, it was 8 December in Japan. 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, 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 Catholics, ignoring all danger, had come to sing him Christmas carols. Upon this realization, Arrupe recalled that he burst into tears. 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 jailers and judges, and he was set free within a month.
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