07 January 2008
The photographs, most of which are in black and white and have great artistic and/or documentary quality, come from public archives and private collections. More specifically,sources include the archive of the Curia Generalicia in Rome, international agencies and private collections such as those belonging to the members of the Arrupe and Gondra families, which contain material of his childhood, youth and Arrupe?s time in office.
This travelling exhibition, which was opened last 13 December 2007 at the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao to commemorate Father Arrupe?s one-hundredth anniversary of his birth, will be exhibited in various cities and galleries throughout 2008.
Arrupe was a very photogenic man, often being the focus of photographers and press photographers, who did not only try to take his image as Jesuit father general but they also aimed to capture the mystery of his gaze. He had a deep, penetrating gaze that was questioning but not intimidating.
Last 2007, the Company of Jesus commemorated the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of charismatic Father Arrupe. He was one of the major figures of the social and religious life in the 20th C, and without any doubt, a man ahead of his time.
Father Arrupe knew who to describe the world ? or the ?global farmhouse? -as he called it, in such a way that it would be valid even today.He became the second Basque man to hold the highest position within the Jesuit community worldwide after St.Ignatius of Loyola?, as Father General of the Jesuits from 1965 to 1983. As one of the most important Bilbao-born citizens in history, he became a Freeman of the City in 1965.
Father Arrupe: A Bilbao-born Father General of the Company of Jesus
Father Arrupe was born on 14 November in 1907 in the famous Calle de la Pelota in Bilbao. He was a Jesuit who was Father General of the Company of Jesus between 1965 and 1983. He was the son of one of the founders of the Gaceta del Norte newspaper and an excellent student of medicine. He was also a fellow student of Nobel Prize Severo Ochoa.
Pedro Arrupe left his medical studies, in spite of the insistence of his teacher and former president of the Republic Juan Negrín, who did everything he could not to lose such an excellent student. Stunned by his experiences during the years he spent with the poor in Vallecas as a student, and following a trip to Lourdes, Father Arrupe left the Faculty of Medicine and entered the Company of Jesus to become a doctor of souls rather than bodies.
Ten years later he was sent to USA, where he supported the prisoners in North American prisons, whom he visited regularly. Once in Japan, his second destination, he worked in the Japanese parish of Yamaguchi, and later he headed the novitiate of Hiroshima, the place that witnessed the atomic bomb explosion in 1945. This led him to immediately turn the novitiate into an emergency hospital.Some years later, Father Arrupe wrote a book about this experience entitled:'Yo viví la bomba atómica', which was a major bestseller at the time.
He was appointed Father General of the Company of Jesus in 1965, which he held for 18 years as a successor of Ignatius of Loyola, thus becoming the second Basque Father General in history.During his years as Father General, he took active part in the Renewal of the Catholic Church under the Second Vatican Council.This renewal has an essential reference point in Arrupe?s thinking and writings still today.
Father Arrupe was known for his endless capacity for work:he travelled across five continents, promoted faith and justice, fostered dialogue with the non-believers, he created the Jesuit Refugee Service, and he was actively involved in the change of social structures so that a fairer and more supportive society could be achieved.
In August 1981, after arriving from a trip across Asia, where he had gone to visit the Cambodian refugees, he suffered a hemiplegia, which did not allow him to continue with his work.After nearly ten years of painful inactivity, he died on 5 February 1991, in the Jesuit headquarters in Rome.
