On November 14, 2018, the feast of St. Giuseppe Pignatelli, Fr. Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, announced to the entire Society that “the process has begun toward the possible beatification of Fr. Pedro Arrupe.” The Society of Jesus had asked the Vicariate of Rome, the place where Fr. Arrupe died, to begin the ecclesial discernment of the heroic nature of his virtues. Then on February 5, 2019, the 28th anniversary of his death, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the session to open the cause of his beatification was held.
The Superior General mentioned in his letter how he had been able to verify in the last few months that the memory and legacy of the man who was the 28th successor of St. Ignatius as the leader of the Society of Jesus was still alive in many diverse locations around the world.
Arrupe was born in Bilbao, Spain, on November 14, 1907. He studied medicine in Madrid from 1923 to 1927, the year in which he entered the novitiate in Loyola. After his studies in the humanities and philosophy he earned a degree in theology and was ordained a priest on July 30, 1936, in Valkenburg, Holland, as the Jesuits had been expelled from Spain in 1932.
|
