Pedro Arrupe: A Heart Larger than the World

This book tells the life of Pedro Arrupe SJ, 1907-1991, whose cause for beatification was introduced in 2019. Arrupe played a central role in the Church of the twentieth century and his influence endures in the many who are fired by his idealism, vision and way of life. A tiny man with a heart truly larger than the world, he lived like a church mouse, prayed for four hours daily, and had a vibrant relationship with the three divine Persons through his sixteen years as General of the Jesuits.

Born in Bilbao, he experienced the poverty of the Madrid slums while pursuing medical studies, and witnessed miracles at Lourdes which led him to join the Jesuit Order in 1927. He was expelled from Spain with his fellow-Jesuits in 1931 and began working in Japan in 1938 only to endure thirty-three days of solitary confinement on charges of espionage, and was a first responder in the oven of Hiroshima when the atom bomb fell there in 1945. He was elected in 1965 as superior general of the Jesuits, then numbering 36,000, and led them fearlessly for sixteen challenging years as the Church grappled with the decrees of the Vatican Council, 1962-1965.

He made a refreshed Ignatian spirituality available not only to the Society but to Christians everywhere who try to find God in their daily lives. His renewal of Jesuit life and mission crystallised around the faith that does justice, and he challenged Jesuit alumni worldwide to become ‘men and women for and with others’. In 1980 he founded the Jesuit Refugee Service which has now spread globally.