26 Facts About Pedro Arrupe

Pedro Arrupe y Gondra, was a Spanish Catholic priest who served as the 28th superior general of the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983.

Pedro Arrupe has been called a second founder of the Society, which he led in the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, especially with regard to faith that does justice and preferential option for the poor.

In 1983, paralysis from a stroke caused Pedro Arrupe to resign from office.

Pedro Arrupe lived on until 1991, when he died in the local Jesuit infirmary.

Pedro Arrupe attended school at the Santiago Apostol High School in Bilbao.

Pedro Arrupe received the top prize in the first year anatomy course.

In 1926, Pedro Arrupe's father died, an event which filled him with great sadness.

Subsequent to these gathered findings, Pedro Arrupe decided not continue his medical studies.

Pedro Arrupe was unable to pursue his studies for the priesthood in Spain, since the Jesuits had been expelled by the Spanish Republican government.

Accordingly, the young Pedro Arrupe did his studies in the Netherlands and Belgium and at Saint Louis University School of Divinity in St Marys, Kansas, where he was ordained in 1936.

Pedro 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, Pedro Arrupe heard people gathering outside his cell door and presumed that the time for him to be executed had arrived.

Pedro 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.

Pedro Arrupe was one of eight Jesuits who were within the blast zone of the bomb, and all eight survived the destruction, protected by a hillock which separated the novitiate from the center of Hiroshima.

Pedro Arrupe was deeply moved at the devotion and respect the people had for Christ, in the midst of their abject poverty.

At the thirty-first General Congregation of the Society of Jesus in 1965, Pedro Arrupe was elected twenty-eighth Superior General of the Jesuits, and served in that post until 1983.

Pedro Arrupe was the second Basque to be Father General, the first being the founder Ignatius of Loyola himself.

Pedro 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 ruled by military juntas.

All the while, Pedro Arrupe continued to support and pray for those people who were willing to lay down their lives to help the poor initiate change.

Pedro Arrupe asked them what they could do to help bring relief to refugees and displaced persons in their own regions.

Pedro Arrupe received a positive response, with numerous offers of personnel, medicine, and funding.

On 7 August 1981, after a long and tiring trip throughout the Far East, Pedro Arrupe suffered a stroke just after his plane landed at Rome's Fiumicino Airport.

Pedro Arrupe was paralysed on his right side and was able to speak only a few words.

Pedro Arrupe then became the first-ever Jesuit superior general to resign.

Pedro Arrupe died at 7:45pm on 5 February 1991, the anniversary of the 26 Martyrs of Japan.

The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints will next determine whether Pedro Arrupe should be declared Venerable.