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The Jesuit Way of Going Global:
Outlines for a Public Presence of the Society of Jesus in a Globalized World
in the Light of Lessons Learned from the Jesuit Refugee Service
--------------------------------------Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the S.T.L. Degree
of Weston Jesuit School of Theology
By: Daniel Villanueva, SJ
Directed by: David Hollenbach, SJ
Second Reader: Thomas Massaro, SJ
Cambridge, Massachusetts
May, 2008
1
This work is dedicated to the people of Voinjama (Liberia) and
Kakuma (Kenya) in whose company I finally understood the vocation
of the Society and rediscovered my own.
2
Preface
Sometimes even brief experiences can create major waves in one’s thinking. In
2004 I was in Voinjama, a little town cut out of the jungle in the north of Liberia. I was
there working for the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), writing assessments about the state
of the surrounding schools. JRS asked me to gather information to facilitate planning for
school reconstruction and food delivery after 14 years of war. Voinjama had electricity
only three hours per day. Separated from my computer, I had a lot of time to think.
It was my first experience with refugees and I was astonished by the high-quality
contribution JRS was making in the midst of that chaos. Several thoughts swirled around
in my mind: JRS’s incredible work in Liberia was barely known outside of JRS’s
context. Widespread knowledge of the project could greatly improve the effect of JRS’s
work. Moreover, if JRS could use the potentiality of the structures of the Society of Jesus
(Jesuits) as an international institution, the impact of the work would bear a great deal
more fruit. Further, JRS was (and still is) the most Ignatian institution I have ever known.
So many things about it impressed me: the type of work, the way of proceeding, the
radical orientation to mission, the composition of the teams, the flexibility of the
institution, and the overlap between community and mission. Why is the Society not
learning from JRS, which embodies Jesuit principles so well? Today, I still believe that
there a fresh spirit within JRS which could serve to renovate the institutional thinking of
the entire Society.
My experiences in Liberia raised some very deep and persistent questions inside
of me. Finding myself submerged in the deep forest, and far from my experience of the
Society in Spain, I was wondering why the Jesuits are not using our strong institutions
for the service of those refugees. Are refugees not an important part of the Jesuit
mission? Are not Africa and the refugees two of the Jesuit apostolic priorities? For me it
looked like JRS was struggling along quite alone, with little support from the
heavyweight institutions of the Jesuits “in the north.” It looked like JRS was not part of
the same mission as, for example, the Jesuit schools or universities in Spain. It looked as
if JRS was not part of the Jesuit structure, but a group of renegades working off to the
3
side with many good intentions and sound procedures, but without consciousness of the
potentiality that the Society of Jesus could offer worldwide.
I remember growing excited thinking about the possibilities: What if the Jesuits
could get all our institutions to “dance” together? What if I, while sitting on the stump of
a Liberian tree, could integrate the Society of Jesus as a whole into the best answer to
this local situation? What if I could call into play universities, high schools, writers,
advocacy groups, media, Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s), parishes, and social
centers from throughout the Jesuit world? Do these varied entities not share the same
Ignatian charism? Do they not have similar roots to their missions? Can we imagine the
strategic potential of the Jesuit network and the weight of its social capital? What could
be more urgent and more Ignatian? These ideas and questions remain alive in me today,
four years removed from the little town of Voinjama.
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................. 6
CHAPTER I. ARRUPE AND THE IGNATIAN GLOBAL VISION ........................................................ 9
1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................... 9
1.1 THE HYPOTHESIS ...................................................................................................................................... 10
1.2 NEED OF RENEWAL ................................................................................................................................... 11
1.3 LINK WITH IGNATIAN GLOBAL V ISION ................................................................................................... 12
1.3.1 Trinitarian Foundation ................................................................................................................... 13
1.3.2 Sense of Apostolic Mission ............................................................................................................. 14
1.3.3 Ideal of Mobility .............................................................................................................................. 15
1.3.4 Intrinsic Availability........................................................................................................................ 16
1.3.5 Union of Hearts ............................................................................................................................... 17
1.4 THE JESUIT POTENTIALITY ...................................................................................................................... 19
1.5 THE FOUNDATIONAL MOMENT ................................................................................................................ 22
1.5.1 A Challenge to the Society .............................................................................................................. 22
1.5.2 An Intentional New Structure ......................................................................................................... 25
1.6 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 26
CHAPTER II. GLOBALIZATION AND JESUIT MISSION .................................................................. 29
2.0 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 29
2.1 JESUITS & SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT A FTER VATICAN II ........................................................................... 30
2.1.1 Voluntary disestablishment............................................................................................................. 31
2.1.2 A New Public & Prophetic Church ................................................................................................ 32
2.1.3 Justice and the Society of Jesus...................................................................................................... 33
2.2 GLOBAL MISSION FOR GLOBAL TIMES ................................................................................................... 36
2.2.1 Globalization and Religion ............................................................................................................. 37
2.2.2 The Church’s Answer to Globalization.......................................................................................... 40
2.2.3 Mission in a Global Age.................................................................................................................. 42
2.2.4 Globalization and Jesuit Mission ................................................................................................... 45
2.3 JESUIT WAYS OF AGENCY ......................................................................................................................... 47
2.3.1 Evolution of the Social Apostolate ................................................................................................. 48
2.3.2 The Era of the Networks.................................................................................................................. 50
2.4 JESUIT REFUGEE SERVICE AND JESUIT MISSION..................................................................................... 52
2.5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 56
CHAPTER III. JRS AS MODEL FOR JESUIT TRANSNATIONALITY ............................................ 58
3.0 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 58
3.1 A FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSNATIONAL RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS......................................................... 58
3.2 JRS AS A MODEL FOR JESUIT TRANSNATIONALITY ............................................................................... 62
3.3.1 JRS Institutional development ........................................................................................................ 63
3.3.2 JRS Dilemmas.................................................................................................................................. 68
3.3.3 Implications ..................................................................................................................................... 75
3.3.4 JRS Jesuit Practices ........................................................................................................................ 78
3.4 TOWARDS A JESUIT N ETWORKING: COMPARISON JRS-AJAN .............................................................. 82
3.4.1 Vision and Structure........................................................................................................................ 83
3.4.2 Comparison JRS-AJAN ................................................................................................................... 84
3.4.4 Characteristics of a Jesuit Networked Institution ......................................................................... 86
3.5. OUTCOMES: JESUIT TRANSNATIONAL POTENTIALITIES ........................................................................ 88
3.6 CONCLUSIONS........................................................................................................................................... 93
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CHAPTER IV. JESUIT MISSION TRANSNATIONAL NETWORK ................................................... 95
4.0 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 95
4.1 JESUIT TRANSNATIONAL TENDENCIES .................................................................................................... 96
4.2 TOWARDS A REAL GLOBAL MISSION ...................................................................................................... 99
4.2.1 Global Apostolic Preferences ....................................................................................................... 100
4.2.2 Synergic Networking ..................................................................................................................... 102
4.2.3 New Structures for a Universal Mission ...................................................................................... 105
4.2.4 Lessons Learned ............................................................................................................................ 107
4.3 JESUIT MISSION TRANSNATIONAL N ETWORK ...................................................................................... 109
4.3.1 The Proposal.................................................................................................................................. 109
4.3.2 The Focus....................................................................................................................................... 112
4.3.3 The Examples................................................................................................................................. 114
4.4 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................... 118
CHAPTER V. FINAL CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................... 120
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................................... 126
A. SOCIETY OF JESUS .................................................................................................................................... 126
B. G LOBALIZATION AND RELIGION .............................................................................................................. 128
C. TRANSNATIONALITY AND NETWORKS .................................................................................................... 129
D. JESUIT REFUGEE SERVICE........................................................................................................................ 130
E. O THERS ..................................................................................................................................................... 132
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Introduction
On February 21st, 2008 Benedict XVI reminded the Society of Jesus of its
vocation to work on the frontiers. Recalling the missionary spirit which has animated
Jesuits through the centuries, from the travels of St. Francis Xavier to the establishment
of the Paraguay Reductions, the Pope urged the Society “to reach the geographical and
spiritual places where others do not reach or find it difficult to reach.” 1 As
encouragement to renew the Jesuit mission, Benedict XVI explicitly talked about the
immense value of the Jesuit Refugee Service as one of the “latest prophetic intuitions of
Arrupe.” This thesis is an attempt to understand why JRS is a prophetic intuition and in
what sense it can be a model for Jesuit apostolic initiatives.
In the preface, talking about my first experience of working with JRS, I recall my
strong sense of admiration for the most Ignatian institution I had ever encountered. I also
remember my strong sense of frustration stemming from the lack of synergies among
JRS and other large Jesuit institutions, synergies potentially able to multiply the effect of
JRS’s work through small but meaningful investments. Both dimensions, the Ignatian
attraction of JRS and the potential for synergies within the Jesuit network, are at the
foundation of my decision to write this thesis.
Since then I have been reading that many Jesuits point to JRS as a product of the
remarkable intuition of Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ (the Superior General of the Society of
Jesus from 1965 to 1981) and a provocative way of rethinking the Jesuit apostolic answer
in modern times. But I did not find any systematic approach to this new type of
organizational structure that is different from the usual Jesuit way, a structure in which
resides a potential model to re-imagine a truly global Jesuit mission. The originality of
this research is its focus on the structural dimensions of JRS and JRS’s novelty within
the body of the Society of Jesus.
This creative approach displays certain pitfalls, such as the lack of previous
models or elaborated bibliography. The main sources of information have been the
official documents of the last four General Congregations of the Society, together with
documentation from the Social Justice Secretariat, and JRS documents. The JRS’s
1
2008.
Benedict XVI, Address to the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, 21 February
7
documents were either published or photocopied during my research in the central JRS
archives in Rome. JRS’s short history and its dynamic nature made difficult and almost
“impertinent” every attempt at systematization. But the advantage has been the
possibility of interviewing a large number of protagonists of this interesting piece of
history of the Society of Jesus. Therefore, one of the most interesting sources of data for
my research has been the direct words (or e-mails) of many individuals who have had
first-hand involvement in JRS’s history. My previous experience with JRS facilitated
most of the contacts, but especially providential in this sense was the opportunity to work
as a communication officer for the 35th General Congregation (GC 35), facilitating two
months of opportunities to talk and interchange information with key people regarding
the history of JRS, the Social Apostolate, and other related institutions.
These pages are an experiment written from my admiration for Arrupe and his
tremendous impact on the Society, along with my devotion to JRS and its tremendous
impact in my own life. I have gathered here much information regarding the foundation
of JRS and Arrupe’s insights of that moment, and the evolution of JRS over its twentyeight years through the eyes of many of the “institutional” protagonists. I have
researched the early Society looking for what I have called the “Ignatian global vision,”
embodied by Arrupe 450 years later, and the process of renewal the Society has been
passing through since this prophetic Superior General. I have consulted literature about
Globalization and religion, trying to understand how JRS can be seen as an apostolic
body and how it fits into the public mission of the Society. I have used bibliography from
transnational religious institutions looking for a framework to understand the possibilities
of a structure like JRS, and I have recalled my background as a Computer Science
Engineer and bibliography on networks to typify and analyze in general terms different
transnational structures. Finally, in what I think is a confirmation of the reliable direction
of these insights, I have intensively referred to the documents produced by the recently
concluded GC 35, still in their draft versions at the moment of printing these pages.2
2
The final version of the decrees is not yet available at the moment of finishing this thesis [May
2008]. The official versions are still awaiting corrections of style and translation adjustments. I have tried
to avoid quoting directly the decrees except in the entirely necessary cases. The decrees on Governance
and Mission have been key sources, especially for the last chapter.
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But this thesis is mainly about the need for structures to embody the Jesuit
vocation towards the global, motivated by the example of a small institution that
understood that challenge. Many of the insights are based on my own sense of being
Jesuit and my own experience of JRS and the universal Society. This is why I have given
preference to the exposition of the whole argument rather than the foundation of every
minor step. My intention has not been to develop a theory or engage in a theological
argument, but to point toward a direction, to be suggestive and provocative about a
horizon that I think is embedded in the Arrupe intuition of JRS.
I cannot finish this introduction without expressing my gratitude to all the people
who have helped me with the research or with the methodological difficulties in the
midst of a field without landmarks. I would like to name the people of JRS and the Social
Apostolate, specially: Alberto Plaza, Dieter Scholz, Elías López, Fernando Franco,
Giuseppe Riggio, Jojo Fung, Josep Sugrañes, Lluis Magriñá, Mark Harrington, Mark
Raper, Michael Campbell Johnston, Michael Czerny, Peter Balleis, and Uta Sievers. I am
also grateful to my Jesuit Provincial, Joaquín Barrero, whose faith in me yielded this
opportunity to study. There are also people who gave part of their precious time for
helping in the research or just helping me to contextualize the work. In this sense I have
to thank especially Bill Murphy, Brad Schaeffer, Cristóbal Fones, Gasper Lo Biondo,
José García de Castro, Jose Ignacio García, Miguel González, Pablo Veiga, Peter Bisson,
and the whole Arrupe House community for helping me with my constant and untimely
proofreading requests. Finally I am most grateful to Thomas Massaro and David
Hollenbach for their comments, orientations, and especially their support and
encouragement, even when the destination of this work was unclear.
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Chapter I. Arrupe and the Ignatian Global Vision
1.0 Introduction
Pedro Arrupe, whose 100th anniversary we celebrated recently, was one of the
most influential General Superiors in the history of the Society of Jesus. Biographers and
historians recall him as the one who refounded the Society upon the bold spirit that
followed Vatican II.3 Among his main contributions is the transformation of Ignatian
spirituality in the midst of a general “return to the sources”4 and the renewal of the sense
of mission that placed the Jesuits back on the frontier of the Church.
The purpose here is not to write a biography or to develop systematically
Arrupe’s theological positions. Rather, it is to show how Arrupe was embodying the
roots of the Ignatian global vocation when he founded the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS)
as a new international body within the Society. To accomplish this, I will develop a
twofold strategy: (a) To follow the mind of Arrupe around 1980 by analyzing his letters,5
interviews, and some conversations with first-hand witnesses; and (b) to go back to the
origins of the Society of Jesus in search for traces of the Ignatian global mindset.
The intention of this research is to prove my hypothesis: At the foundation of the
Jesuit Refugee Service is Arrupe’s intention to renew the original dynamism and
3
“He is credited with refounding the Jesuit Order during his generalate, from 1965 to 1983, in the
wake of profound social changes during the 1960s.” Mark Raper, “JRS and The Ignatian Tradition,” in
Danielle Vella (Ed), Everybody’s Challenge: Essential Documents of Jesuit Refugee Service 1980-2000,
(Rome: JRS, 2000), 111. “Arrupe was known almost unanimously as the prophet of the post-Vatican
Council.” Peter Hans Kolvenbach, Interview by Ignacio Arregui during Arrupe’s 100th anniversary;
available from http://www.jesuitas.es/media/Archivos/Pdf/Entrevista%20al%20P%20General.pdf;
Internet; Accessed 19 December 2007.
4
The Vatican II document on religious life, Perfectae Caritatis, urged religious to return to the
sources to find new life and vitality. In the Society of Jesus this urgency of renewal is stated in GC31,
which tried to renew the Society based on the urgings of the II Vatican council.
5
For my research I am using several texts from Arrupe, but I am especially focused on a selection
of letters gathered by the “Centro de Espiritualidad” of the Argentinean province of the Society of Jesus. In
July 1979, Arrupe encouraged a group of Latin American Jesuits to put together the letters about the
integration of action and the spiritual life, availability, the intellectual apostolate, one called “Our Answer
to the Challenge”, and the conference titled “Our Way of Proceeding.” Then Arrupe stated to those Jesuits
that in these writings "you have what the Society want from you. This is the Society of Jesus." Pedro
Arrupe, Cartas del Padre Arrupe, (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Centro de Espiritualidad de la Provincia
Argentina de la Compañía de Jesús, 1980) 5. This legacy is perfect for my research as it contains Arrupe's
emphases after GC32, especially close to the time of the foundation of JRS.
10
universality of the mission of the Society of Jesus. This will allow me, in further
developments, to use it as a model for a Jesuit apostolic answer to global challenges.
1.1 The Hypothesis
The most obvious and primary parallel between the institution of JRS and the
original Society of Jesus is that both are based on the works of mercy.6 The first
companions practiced them in Rome and the inclusion of this type of mission appears in
the criteria for the Formula of the Institute. Without denying this view, which is
absolutely correct, my approach emphasizes a different one. I see JRS not only as a work
of mercy but specifically as a new global apostolic response on the part of the whole
Society, imbued with a new understanding of mission and a new structural dimensions,
which, as I try to demonstrate here, is Arrupe’s inheritance from the universal and global
vision of Ignatius and the first companions.
That is to say, my position is that Don Pedro did not choose to answer to the
refugee problem because of its similarity with the original work of the early Society, or
simply to strengthen the social commitment of the Jesuits, but because of the complex
and global dimension of the problem and the suitability of our infrastructure and vision
to offer a global and qualified response to that problem. I will contend, further on, that
JRS is a current model for other Jesuit public presences. This is not because of the
specificity of the work with refugees, but because of the intentionality of JRS’s structure
and its way of proceeding that plans to be a Jesuit apostolic answer for our globalized
times.
When he founded JRS, Arrupe was not only starting a new apostolic structure in
the Society of Jesus, but he was also inaugurating a new way of answering the signs of
the times; one more appropriate, in accord with the needs of the current era, and also
with the infrastructure and the vocation of the Jesuits. Founding this new structure,
Arrupe was seeking to renew the passion of the Jesuit apostolic mission. He was trying to
assure that contact with refugees would bring the entire Society of Jesus to the necessary
6
Kevin O’Brien has authored an STL thesis on this idea of the JRS as a modern model of the
works of mercy, what he calls “ministries of consolation.” Kevin O’Brien, “Consolation in Action: The
Jesuit Refugee Service and the Ministry of Accompaniment.” in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 37/4,
winter, 2005.
11
conversion towards the faith that does justice. But in a particular way, this charismatic
Father General was trying to embody, towards the end of the twentieth century, the
global vision that a small group of companions had started almost four hundred and fifty
years before.
1.2 Need of renewal
Arrupe was so deeply rooted in the Ignatian spirituality, and his familiarity with
Ignatius and the foundational insights was extraordinarily strong. Maybe this was
because of the missionary work that pushed Arrupe to adapt his message to the Japanese
context, his time as novice master with the task of transferring the core of the Jesuit
spirituality to the newcomers, or all the cultural changes that he had to pass through in
his own personal history. The fact is that during his whole life of ministry, Arrupe was
concerned with the correct interpretation of Ignatian charisms7, and that sense of fidelity
to our vocation is present in most of his letters and decisions.8
It is no secret that Arrupe was seriously concerned about the situation of the
Society of Jesus even before he became General.9 As provincial of Japan, he insisted on
his concern about the “limit situation”10 of the Society. The General Congregation that
elected him was clear about the need for revitalizating the mission of the Society11 and
the following one, known as the “Arrupe congregation”, could be understood as an
answer to this situation.12 His letters as general are full of references to the urgency of
7
“I was always very concerned that the true charisms of St. Ignatius be correctly interpreted.”
Pedro Arrupe, One Jesuit’s Spiritual Journey, (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986) 23.
8
“Fidelity to our vocation does not allow us to step back.” Arrupe, Cartas, 70. “We are rooted in
our specific vocation.” Ibid, 60. “Criterion of our founder are safe and precious.” Ibid, 74.
9
Arrupe is worried about “signs of real deterioration in both areas [spiritual life and apostolate]
and of a fruitless split between them.” Pedro Arrupe, A Challenge to Religious Life Today, (St. Louis:
Institute of Jesuit Resources, 1979),193.
10
Arrupe, Spiritual Journey, 23.
11
GC 31, D 1, n.6. See also n.7. “In order that our Society may more aptly fulfill in this new age
its mission under the Roman Pontiff, the GC31 has striven with all its power so to promote a renewal that
those things may be removed from our body which could constrict its life and hinder it from fully attaining
its end, and that in this way its internal dynamic freedom may be made strong and vigorous, and ready for
every form of the service of God.”
12
GC32 presented, following Arrupe, the utopia of the apostolic mission. Arrupe, Cartas, 13. He
has no doubt affirming that the answer of the Society to today’s challenges is “simply the progressive
execution of the GC32 decrees.” Arrupe, Cartas, 70.
12
conversion, change, and renewal of the Jesuits.13 He was explicit about the deteriorating
situation of both the spiritual and apostolic aspects of the Jesuits. “Only the praxis of our
life will be the measure of our sincerity with God’s will.”14
One of his obsessions, probably enhanced by the criticisms he received from within
the Jesuits, was to differentiate the core of the Ignatian legacy from the secondary and
rescindable details, in order to let the Spirit narrow down the specificity of the Jesuit
contribution to the modern world without being overly fixed and closed on precise
stances. 15 He was trying to open the traditional practices to the new required apostolic
creativity.16 It is in this sense that Vatican II’s claim for renovation of the charisms17 fit
perfectly with Arrupe’s sense of a need for renewal. He was convinced that in their
circumstances they could be “more Ignatian than Ignatius himself.”18 His references to
the early society and Ignatius’ insights are a commonplace in his letters and exhortations.
1.3 Link with Ignatian Global Vision
It was not until the mid 80’s that references to the globalization processes and
worldwide dynamics of all types started. This is why, even while reference to the concept
of universality is almost constant in Arrupe’s documents, I have found no use of the
word “global” and just a few references pointing to the concept of globality.19 Not until
GC34 does this concept, and the more explicit need of putting in practice the global
vision of Ignatius, become prevalent.20 But even before 1975 we find frequent reference
to Arrupe’s vision of the international and universal aspects of our vocation. This section
demonstrates how Arrupe is using his Ignatian inheritance when focusing on the
universality of our vocation and the need for rethinking the modes of Jesuit apostolic
13
There is need of a more wide and deep application of the GC32 recommendations for our
personal conversion and the conversion of our apostolic activity. Arrupe, Cartas, 73. The two last
congregations [31 and 32] have motivated the renewal, actualization, and adptation of the Society in the
light of Vatican II. Arrupe, Cartas, 103.
14
Arrupe, Cartas, 12.
15
“We need to question if what we are doing is a priority or whether we should stop doing it to
engage in other ministries.” Arrupe, Cartas, 72.
16
Ibid, 12.
17
Perfectae Caritatis 2.
18
Arrupe, Spiritual Journey, 90.
19
He talks about the world as a “global village” emphasizing the interconnectedness of the time.
Arrupe, Cartas, 77. He also compares the current situation of cultural revolution with the times of
discovery when Ignatius started the Society. Ibid, 56.
20
GC34 expressed clearly the need of practicing Ignatian universalism. GC 34, D 21, n.2.
13
presence. When Ignatius founded the Society, his global vision was key to the shaping of
a new religious institution with a worldwide vision of universal engagement. Most of the
initial features of the Society had, at least in part, this intention. In the following pages I
will trace Arrupe’s intuitions in five loci in which I think the Ignatian global vision
resides with special strength: (1) the Trinitarian foundation; (2) the Jesuit sense of
apostolic mission; (3) the intrinsic availability of the Society; (4) the ideal of worldwide
mobility; and (5) the need for union of hearts. These are five key points of Ignatius’
global vision that, as I will demonstrate, Arrupe renewed and revitalized as part of his
universalizing tendency.
1.3.1 Trinitarian Foundation
Arrupe is constantly going back to the sources in search of what he called the
“secret of St. Ignatius.”21 As part of this thread to the sources he wrote an entire letter
about the Trinitarian inspiration of the Ignatian charism,22 and he pushed the Society to
be inspired by the Ignatian vision that is “evangelical and Trinitarian in its scope,
embracing the whole world, envisaging the role [the] Society would play in it.”23 The
origin of the missionary vocation of the Society lies in this Trinitarian dialogue.24 That is
to say that Arrupe is using precisely the Trinitarian intuition of Ignatius as the source of
inspiration to discern the role of the Society in the world: Sent by the Father to the whole
word, with the Son, in a mission of redemption, helped by the constant presence of a
discernible Spirit. This intuition, best expressed in the contemplation on the Incarnation25
in the Spiritual Exercises, is precisely the origin of the universality of Ignatius’ vision.26
This is the theological framework to understand the universal vision, to explain what
21
Pedro Arrupe, A Planet to Heal (Rome: International Center for Jesuit Education, 1977), 309.
Kevin Burke (Ed), Pedro Arrupe, Essential Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 150.
23
Pedro Arrupe, A Planet to Heal, 309.
24
Pedro Arrupe, Challenge to Religious Life Today, 59-60.
25
The contemplation of the Incarnation is the composition of place to rethink the mission. The
most important decrees about the mission in the last congregations (GC 32, D4 : “Our Mission Today” and
GC 34, D2: “Servants of Christ Mission.”) used this contemplation as a framework to understand the
mission of the Society.
26
“The international character of our mission finds its genesis in the Trinitarian vision of
Ignatius” GC 34, D 21, n.1. Barry also describes Ignatian spirituality as Trinitarian. William A. Barry and
Robert G. Doherty, Contemplatives in Action, The Jesuit Way (New York: Paulist Press, 2002), 10.
22
14
moves Ignatius to embrace the entirety of humankind27 and to understand the apostolic
mission as participation in the Son’s mission.
1.3.2 Sense of Apostolic Mission
John O’Malley has studied in depth how the Jesuits were one of the groups that
first used the concept of mission in the apostolic sense, contrary to the usual tendency in
the Middle Ages to use it to refer to the missions of the Trinity.28 Linked with the already
pointed Trinitarian intuition, the deep sense of being sent with the Son, and thus the
strong identity rooted on this idea of apostolic mission, was the most original feature of
the early Society.29 The first Jesuits, in the midst of a Renaissance return to the New
Testament and early Christianity, were impregnated by a sense of apostolicity modeled
upon the first disciples and St. Paul.30 This self-image of men on mission is basic to
understanding the global shaping of the early Society of Jesus.
Back to our era, the rediscovery of the centrality of mission in Jesuit identity is
clearly linked with Arrupe and Arrupe’s congregation. GC32 restated the utopian
elements of the apostolic mission.31 Don Pedro stated clearly that the Jesuit’s “life is
based on mission, on being sent,”32 and something is not working if a Jesuit is not
radically available to be sent.33 After GC32, he was sending a constant message to his
fellows: Availability to the mission is at the heart of Jesuit identity, and therefore the
Society of Jesus is essentially a body on mission. This centrality of mission is not just an
inspiring motto, but it has serious structural consequences in the ideals of mobility,
availability, and the needs of unity in an apostolic body “ad dispersionem.”
27
“The Trinitarian attraction in Ignatius’ devotion tends to embrace the whole of humankind.”
Peter H. Kolvenbach, The Road from La Storta, (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Resources, 2000), 23-24 cited
in Barry, Op.Cit. 77.
28
John W. O’Malley, “Mission and the Early Jesuits,” in John W. O’Malley [et al.], Ignatian
spirituality and mission / The Way supplement, 1994/79 (London: The Way Publications, 1994), 3.
29
“The more effective and encompassing pastoral orientation was what particularly distinguished
the Jesuit way from the way of the older orders, whether monastic or mendicant” John W. O’Malley, Los
Primeros Jesuitas (Bilbao: Mensajero-Sal Terrae,1993), 450. The sense of being sent on mission is not
only present in the contemplation of the incarnation, but also in other images used in the Spiritual
Exercises like the contemplation of the Kingdom, or the Two Standards. It was stated in an institutional
way in part VII of the Constitutions.
30
O’Malley, “Mission and the Early Jesuits,” 5.
31
Arrupe, Cartas, 13.
32
Arrupe, A Challenge to Religious Life Today, 59.
33
Arrupe, Cartas, 51.
15
1.3.3 Ideal of Mobility
In his first address to the 31st General Congregation, shortly after being elected
General, Arrupe had already developed a first approach to worldwide processes and the
changed landscape in which the Society of Jesus should rethink itself.34 He had no doubt
about the need for responding to global problems with universal answers,35 and the
question was how the Jesuits were adapting their structures and ministries to the new
times. In this sense Arrupe was trying to recover the initial mobility of the first
companions, convinced of the inconvenience of the excessive stability36 of most of the
Jesuit ministries of his time. Whenever he wanted to stress the essentials of Jesuit
identity, availability and mobility were the first highlighted features.37 In the midst of
this renewal enterprise, Arrupe looked back to Jerónimo Nadal, the “herald of Ignatian
thought,”38 and recalled his formulations about the image of journeying, mobility, and
the concept of the total availability of the Jesuit for mission.
The Constitutions are clear about the Jesuit vocation: “to travel through the world
and live in any part of it whatsoever,” for the greater service of God and help of souls.39
But this clarity was not enough for the early Society, and Ignatius sent Nadal40 to travel
everywhere explaining the document to the recently born Jesuit communities, and
interpreting the founding text to a Society of Jesus that was in that moment “an order
without tradition.”41 The meaning of the apostolic mobility of the Society of Jesus is
clear when he adds “the journey” as a type of Jesuit residence, and stressed that by
34
Ibid, 77.
“Why Interprovincial and International Collaboration?” in Pedro Arrupe, Other Apostolates
Today (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986) 185-197.
36
Arrupe, Cartas, 79.
37
Ibid, 111. It is also interesting that in the same direction, when Kolvenbach talks about the JRS
and its Jesuit inheritance, he understands that the key qualities of our tradition are universality, mobility,
and apostolic availability. Danielle Vella (Ed), Everybody’s Challenge: Essential Documents of Jesuit
Refugee Service 1980-2000 (Rome: JRS International, 2000) 55.
38
Arrupe, Cartas, 121.
39
Constitutions [304].
40
In 1522 Nadal was sent by Ignatius “to promulgate and explain the recently completed
Constitutions to Jesuit communities in Sicily and then in Spain and Portugal.” O’Malley, “Mission and the
Early Jesuits,” 5.
41
John W. O’Malley. “To Travel to Any Part of the World” in Studies in the Spirituality of
Jesuits, 16/2, (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1984), 3.
35
16
means of it “the whole world becomes our house.”42 The link among the missions, their
worldwide scope, and the ideal of mobility, is clear: journeying for the greater utility of
the ministries is the dwelling place of the Jesuits because there are missions43 that “are
for the whole world.”44 That is to say that the global scope of the Jesuit mission was
settled since the very beginning of their history. Nadal insists on emphasizing the idea of
“whole world”, “everywhere”, “whatever place”, “throughout the earth”, “universal
mission” as the extent of their ministries.45 The Jesuit mission is framed on “the most
ample place and reaches as far as the globe itself.”46
1.3.4 Intrinsic Availability
The Jesuit commitment to ministry any place in the world for God’s greater service
has a structural expression in the fourth vow, a unique characteristic of the Society of
Jesus. This frequently misunderstood47 link with the Pontiff of Rome is not just an
expression of loyalty to the Pope, but “an expression of dedication to a worldwide and
unconditioned ministry.”48 There is no way of talking about universal mission and the
Ignatian global vision without referring to this direct link to the “bishop of the universal
Church,”49 because it is this aspect of the Pope’s ministry, its universality and global
scope, that the Jesuits want to share through this special vow.50
Ignatius himself clarified this in Part V of the Constitutions when he said: “the
entire purpose of this fourth vow of obedience to the pope was and is with regard to the
42
“It must be noted that in the Society there are different kinds of houses or dwellings. These are:
the house of probation, the college, the professed house, and the journey – and by this last the whole world
becomes our house.”Epistolae et Monumenta P. Hieronmi Nadal, V, 54, cited in O’Malley, “To Travel”, 6.
43
O’Malley insists everywhere that for the first companions missions and journeying for ministry
and pilgrimage were synonymous. John W. O’Malley, “Five Missions of the Jesuit Charism,” in Studies in
the Spirituality of Jesuits, Winter 2006 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Resources, 2006), 8.
44
“Which are for the whole world, which is our house. Wherever there is need or greater utility
for our ministries, there is our house.”44 Epistolae et Monumenta P. Hieronmi Nadal, V, 469-470, cited in
O’Malley, “To Travel”, 6.
45
Words extracted from Nadal quotations in O’Malley, “To Travel,” 8.
46
Epistolae et Monumenta P. Hieronymi Nadal (MonNad) V, 773-774 cited in O’Malley, “To
Travel,” 8.
47
O’Malley insists that seldom “has something so central to an order’s identity been so badly
misunderstood.” O’Malley, “Five Missions,” 7.
48
O’Malley, “To Travel,” 9.
49
MonNad, V, 755 cited in O’Malley, “To Travel,” 9.
50
Ibid
17
missions.”51 This is a vow to God, and it does not refer to the Pope but to the missions.52
It can be said that this is a missionary vow, a vow of mobility,53 to travel for the sake of
the ministry, a vow of readiness to travel anywhere in the world “searching the greater
glory of God and help for souls.”54 If there were any doubt, Nadal gave us the
interpretation linked with his already explained idea of the journey as the Jesuit dwelling
place, saying specifically that “to this end looks our vow that is made to the supreme
pontiff, which specifically concerns mission”55
Arrupe had no doubt about giving availability its importance in the whole
Ignatian system. He masterly combined the idea of the Jesuit as “the available”56 one
with the parallel need for discernment, and the emphasis on creativity and openness to
the Spirit on the part of the local superior.57 For Don Pedro it is the radical availability,
the readiness to obey, that generates a body on mission, an apostolic tool rooted in its
availability to Christ and his Vicar.58 This is why it is important when Arrupe
emphasizes the fourth vow as “a principle and foundation of the Society, and a condition
of its structure.”59 When he says that this special link with the Pope conditions the
structure of the Society, he is again emphasizing the universality and global scope of our
mission, and the consequent need of a corporate union. The recently concluded 35th
General Congregation confirmed how through the fourth vow the Jesuits “achieve
greater availability to the divine will and offer the Church better service.”60
1.3.5 Union of Hearts
Part of the Ignatian intention regarding the fourth vow is also to keep the apostolic
51
Constitutions [529].
O’Malley, Los Primeros Jesuitas, 365.
53
Barry also is clear on the interpretation of this vow as about mission and mobility. Barry,
Op.Cit. 53.
54
Constitutions [605].
55
MonNad V, 195-196 cited in O’Malley, “To Travel,” 7.
56
Arrupe, Cartas, 52.
57
For an interesting relation between availability and discernment see Arrupe, Cartas, 55.
58
GC 32, D 2, 30-32.
59
Arrupe, Spiritual Journey, 92.
Ignatius said “beginning and principal foundation of the society.” O’Malley, The First Jesuits,
298-301. There is no doubt about the centrality of this specific feature of the Jesuits, “our beginning and
first foundation.” Declarationes circa missiones (1544-45), ConsMHSJ, I, 162 (quoted in GC 31, D 1, 4.)
60
GC 35, Draft of the Decree on Obedience, 30.
52
18
group together under one head and one universal mission.61 One of the most difficult
tasks of the first Society was to maintain the unity in dispersion and build up ties to bind
together a disperse body, the natural tendency of which was to isolate and split in its
remotely spread parts. Since the beginning there was a concern about “uniting the
dispersed members with their head and among themselves.”62 The union was fostered
through personal relationships, meetings and visits, but the main tool to reinforce the
unity was what Ignatius called the “unity of minds and hearts,”63 a unity based on love
for one another; a mystic dimension of the Society capable of binding together their
members through prayer, obedience, and frequent communications.
A rapidly growing Society of Jesus needed organizational tools for a remote
leadership to govern a dispersed international body, to preserve the union of hearts and to
nourish the identity of the new institute. Ignatius wrote an incredible number of letters,64
most of them addressed to Jesuits talking about ordinary issues of governance and the
life of the Society.65 The correspondence with Rome was in service to the building of the
universal body of the Society,66 and that is the value of the letters: an informational
management system to transmit ideas, foster values, communicate insights, channel
obedience, assign missions, and solve problems. 67
61
“This union is produced in great part by the bond of obedience.” Constitutions [659]. “They are
to that end [the goal of the Society: to procure the salvation and perfection of all human being] bound by
that fourth vow to the Supreme Pontiff.” MonNad V, 773-774 cited in O’Malley, “To Travel,” 8. “It is
through this vow that the Society participates in the universal mission of the Church and that the
universality of its mission, carried out through a wide range of ministries in the service of local churches, is
guaranteed.” GC 35, Draft of the Decree on Obedience, 31.
62
Constitutions [655].
63
The first chapter of part VIII of the Constitutions is all about how to foster this “union of
hearts.” Constitutions [655-676].
64
Compared with other collections of letters of the XVIth century, his letters and instructions
during the last eight years of his life are double in number the ones that Luther wrote in a period of 26
years. Dominique Bertrand, La Política de San Ignacio de Loyola (Santander: Mensajero-Sal Terrae,
2003), 42-45.
65
From the 6,815 letters signed by Ignatius, 5,301 were addressed to Jesuits, mostly superiors.
When the addressee is not a Jesuit, usually it is directed to influential people and multipliers of
relationships. Ibid, 45-49.
66
Ibid, 87.
67
An important piece of this strategy is Juan Alfonso Polanco, who started working in the Rome
offices of the Society in 1548 and changed the artisan system of correspondence into an efficient system of
documentation. He is the one who worked on a set of strict rules (“Reglas que deben de observar cuando
escriban los de la compañía dispersos fuera de Roma”) that imposed a rigid methodology that kept a copy
or summary of every communication and transformed the Rome curia into a central node of an efficient
informational network. It is important to remark that this communicational system meant a competent
19
Arrupe’s first call as a General was to plan on a more universal level, to think
about expanding the scale of apostolic projects, to look beyond merely local works and
to be open to the universality and availability proper to the Society of Jesus.68 He is
trying to avoid the isolation of the provinces as closed compartments.69 He was
determined to open up the Jesuit structure to allow concerted action at the highest level.
He was convinced that our potentiality lies in the unity of the mission, of corporate
apostolic plans coordinated at universal, provincial, and local levels.70 For him, the key
step for the Society of Jesus was to proceed in an organic mode, and for this he had to
fight against the “boundaries” that sometimes isolate provinces and “limit enterprises of
this kind”.71 This tension toward unity can be tracked in his emphasis on the vital link
between the 4th and 11th decree of the 32nd Congregation.72 The mission is central to the
Society of Jesus but should not cause the Jesuits to deviate from their spirit. For this it
should be in balance with the union of hearts, the spiritual life, a sense of community and
obedience, and a spirit of availability.
1.4 The Jesuit Potentiality
The previous section demonstrates how some of the most important of Arrupe’s
insights were rooted in what I have called the Ignatian global vision, and how he was
trying to renew the “internal dynamic freedom”73 of the Jesuits by implementing the
consequences of the universalistic tendency of the first Society of Jesus. Arrupe insisted
again and again on the need for a renewal of the missionary identity of a Jesuit, as
delegation of responsibility and a clear decision-making protocol. The issues were solved at the minimum
required level of authority. Only the truly important problems reached the desk of Ignatius. Ibid, 51-56.
In Part VII of the Constitutions (especially on number [673]) we can read about what helps the
union of souls, and the interchange of letters is specifically indicated as a way of edifying and consoling
from one part of the Society to another. Ibid, 64. The constitutions themselves stated the need for
communication of the body with the members, and as a mean to develop this strategy. That is why the
General should live in Rome, and the provincials in the respective parts. Constitutions [688].
68
Arrupe, Cartas, 78.
69
Ibid, 146.
70
Ibid, 89.
71
From his address after the election at the GC 31. In Arrupe, Spiritual Journey, 24-26.
72
The 4th decree is “Our Mission Today,” and the 11th decree is “The Union of Minds and
Hearts.” Arrupe, Cartas, 92.
73
GC 31, D 1, n.7.
20
someone who is sent, available, and ready to go wherever the apostolic criteria
indicates.74
Jesuits, for Arrupe, are individuals rooted in the love for Christ advanced in a
radical availability for the mission framed in a deep sense of belonging to an apostolic
body.75 He was trying to be coherent with this insight not only at the personal but also
the institutional level. He urged the Jesuits to do more, not quantitatively, but in the sense
of the Ignatian Magis. In his vision there was no place for immobility or fixed ministries
but for a creative, dynamic, risky, and flexible apostolic commitment.76 The challenge,
for Don Pedro, is to follow a lively and fecund fidelity to the original vocation.
I have already expressed his concerns about the lack of unity and mobility of the
Society, especially in its institutions.77 At a structural level, the Society needed to recover
its sense of a flexible, adaptable, agile, and ready apostolic body. 78 As Ignatius did,79 he
74
For reasons of space I am not developing here the interesting point about the impact of the
school ministry on the original Society. There are many authors who defend that the growth of the
organization and the establishment of big institutions pushed many Jesuits to lose this initial geographical
mobility and apostolic availability. O’Malley is quite strong on this, affirming that the decision to found
the schools was one of the key strategic decisions that most shaped the early Society. To say that the early
Society, as I am trying to defend here, is changed after 1548 with the foundation of the first school at
Messina, is a common argument against the use of the “origins” to emphasize Jesuit mobility and
availability. The question here is: how much did it compromise mobility and flexibility? And especially for
my research: how much is this a different stage in the Society of Jesus, a development of the Charism
supported by the founder himself, a step forward that conflicted somehow with the image of itinerant
disciples ready to advance towards the greater glory of God?
Even though with the foundation of the schools the old Society of Jesus definitely had an impact
on its initial mobility, I am with Peter Balleis saying that the JRS has regained this mobility in the Society,
that the Jesuit Institute through JRS “is regaining some of the mobility which is traditionally so
characteristic of Jesuits,” and that Arrupe was trying to renew this insight when he called Jesuits to become
available and mobile for the refugees. Peter Balleis, “The Specific Jesuit Identity of JRS,” in Vella,
Everybody’s Challenge, 105.
About the effect of the schools on the society see:
O’Malley, Los Primeros Jesuitas, 295-298.
O’Malley, “Five Missions,” 23.
75
When he listed his idea of sensus societatis, the essence of being Jesuit, most of the attributes
pointed towards this direction: availability, universality, sense of body, sense of discernment, sense of
minimal society, and love for the Church. Arrupe, Cartas, 151.
76
“There is a conflict between the universality of our constitutions and our hierarchical
government on one side, and the stability that characterizes most our ministry.” Arrupe, Cartas, 77-78.
Years later Kolvenbach still remarked upon the “fairly frequent lack of apostolic availability” in the
Society of Jesus. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, “Review of the JRS to the whole Society,” in Vella, Everybody’s
Challenge, 55.
77
“The lack of mobility is especially strong in the institutions.” Arrupe, Cartas, 72.
78
Arrupe talked not only about individual availability, but also as a universal body. This implies a
common search for the will of God in a context of discernment. Arrupe, Cartas, 55. Among his last
recommendations to a JRS team, the day before his stroke, it is the idea of communal discernment and
21
was envisioning a kind of “task force” whose scope is the whole world, bound by a deep
union of hearts, and linked to the heart of the Church through the fourth vow. That makes
Jesuits available, universal, and truly Church wherever they are sent. All of them would
proceed, like pieces of the same puzzle, working in a universal task that requires a strong
unity.80 This sense of corpus universale societatis is not strange to Arrupe who is clear
about the international nature of the Jesuit vocation and the consequent concern for the
universal good of the Church and humankind.81 He was convinced that by enhancing
interprovincial and international collaboration, the Society was recovering the
international dimension of its mission and that this will lead Jesuits to a “closer solidarity
and more generous sharing of material and human resources to satisfy apostolic needs.”82
This global dimension of the Society’s government was necessary to meet needs
and problems that were not local in nature, but common to several provinces, nations, or
regions: “Their international or universal nature should place them among our apostolic
priorities.”83Arrupe understood the Jesuit strength in this unity on mission, their
potentiality in this global synergy, the possibility of deploying just one, synchronized
mission84 in multiple places in the world, in very different fields, and with all levels of
influence. “The Society still counts with a considerable number of highly qualified men
and institutions and with a worldwide organization which under some respects is unique
in the Church.”85 This was truly the Jesuit potentiality, because they are “better equipped
than other religious groups to meet the international challenges of today’s world.”86 This
is why when the global refugee crises exploded, he understood it as a challenge for the
Society, and he was ready to propose a consequent answer.
flexibility to the Spirit. Pedro Arrupe, “Final Address to Jesuits Working with Refugees in Thailandia,” in
Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 34.
79
The Society of Jesus “is a companionship that is, at one and the same time, religious, apostolic,
sacerdotal, and bound to the Roman Pontiff by a special bond of love and service.” GC 32, D 2, n.24.
80
Arrupe, Spiritual Journey, 25. “Act as a single body”, “Act in unity.” Ibid, 24.
81
Arrupe, Other Apostolates Today, 188.
82
Ibid.
83
Ibid, 189.
84
“Our universalism does not consist in the fact that our members are occupied almost
everywhere in almost everything, but in the fact that we all collaborate in a more universal task, which
requires stricter unity.” Arrupe, Spiritual Journey, 24.
85
Arrupe, Other Apostolates Today, 195.
86
Ibid.
22
1.5 The foundational moment 87
1.5.1 A Challenge to the Society
In 1979 the crisis of Vietnamese boat people struck Arrupe in such a way that he
felt it was a challenge that the Jesuits “cannot ignore.”88 What I have called the Jesuit
potentiality (their transnational, networked, and interdisciplinary body) could be the
reason why the president of the World Bank and the general secretary of the International
Catholic Migration Commission visited Arrupe urging him to get the Jesuits involved in
the issue.89 Within the Society, the refugee crisis passed all the checklists of criteria of
the Constitutions to be an apostolic priority.90 The already fostered need for an
international dimension embodying the ideals of availability and universality made this
answer desirable.91 Mark Raper emphasizes that the overwhelming response of the
provincials around the world to Arrupe’s initial appeal is what led him to the further
insight about the possibilities of the Society. The positive reaction, availability, and
number of offers, drove him to weigh the potentialities of the Jesuit international body
87
To understand Arrupe’s mind, I prefer to use the initial letters and the documents about the first
meetings on those years around 1980 rather than the charter and the mission statement of the JRS in the
sense that they were written by Kolvenbach ten years after the foundational moment. I’m with Peter
Balleis (Peter Balleis, “The Specific Jesuit Identity of JRS,” in Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 102) to
affirm that the foundational documents of JRS are mainly the call to all the major superiors to respond to
the human crisis of the refugees, and a letter to the whole Society (Arrupe, “The Society of Jesus and the
Refugee Problem” in Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 28). To widen my research I’m using the documents
related to the initial consultation undertaken by Arrupe to start thinking about a Jesuit answer to the
refugee problem. These documents are in the issue n.19 of Promotio Iustitiae and the article about the
meeting of Michael Campbell-Johnston, “What Don Pedro Had in Mind when he Invited the Society to
Work with Refugees,” in Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 40-45. For completing my research I have
interviewed by e-mail some of the participants of that meeting and some of the former international
directors of JRS.
88
“If we want to remain faithful to St. Ignatius’ criteria for our apostolic work and the recent calls
st
of the 31 and 32nd General Congregations.” Arrupe, “The Society of Jesus and the Refugee Problem.” The
interconnectedness of the contemporary world makes this overall coordination of our efforts
“indispensable if we are to remain faithful to our apostolic mission.” Arrupe, Other Apostolates Today,
191.
89
Robert McNamara, then President of the World Bank, accompanied by Dr Elisabeth Winkler,
Secretary General of the International Catholic Migration Commission (Geneva), visited Father Arrupe
urging him to get the Society involved in assisting those refugees. Pedro Arrupe, “Why Get Involved?,”
Promotio Iustitiae 19 (1980): 137.
90
It was a growing urgency, continuity, difficult and complex human problem involved, lack of
other people to attend, universal good, etc… And even when the ministry of the word should be preferred
to the corporal works, “preference should be given to the corporal works in times of catastrophe.” Quote of
Father Aldama in Arrupe, “Why Get Involved?” 137.
91
“Their international or universal nature should place them among our apostolic priorities.”
Arrupe, Other Apostolates, 189.
23
“to respond swiftly and effectively, because of our many centres where competent people
of good will can be found.”92
The apostolic needs of the times fit perfectly with the specific potentiality of the
Society of Jesus. On the one side, there was a Jesuit infrastructure demanding a greater
interprovincial and international cooperation under the renewed global insights. On the
other side, there was a global problem in need of coordinated international bodies and the
involvement of agents able to develop answers not only through direct assistance but also
through information collection, academic research, and public awareness.93 This is why
Arrupe saw the suitability of the Society of Jesus and understood the JRS as a vivid
apostolic challenge. Following Ignatius’ vision, Don Pedro was persuaded that the
Society of Jesus was about to address an urgent and universal need of the time and, in the
process, not only help “to develop a real sense of universality,”94 but also it will be “of
much spiritual benefit.”95 Learning from the refugees, the Society started “a refreshing
methodology for social action”96 based on an accompaniment that leads to advocacy.
This is the justice that Arrupe dreamed about, the justice that arises out of love.
Even though at the foundational moment there were references to the option for
the poor and the spiritual benefits that this kind of apostolate would bring to the whole
Society, my point here is supported by the fact that the reasons that Arrupe gave for the
creation of this new apostolic service, and the overwhelming totality of the aims and
objectives of the new work, are directly related to the potentialities of the infrastructure,
in a wide sense, of the Society of Jesus.
Michael Campbell-Johnston97 confirms this interpretation when affirming that
among the reasons that Arrupe gave in that first meeting, was that “the Society is
everywhere and has information covering the whole world. We are already in contact
92
Mark Raper, “Concluding Remarks” at Australian Jesuits Province Gathering, 14th December
2007. Non Published Work.
93
I’m using the article in which Michael Campbell-Johnston explains the content of the first
meeting with Arrupe talking about the possibility of a Jesuit answer to the refugee problem (15-16 sep
1980) and Arrupe’s letter on 14 Nov. 1980 proclaiming the foundation of the new service at the curia.
Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 28-30,40-45.
94
Arrupe, “Why Get Involved?,” 138
95
Ibid, 29.
96
Mark Raper, “Concluding Remarks.”
97
Michael Campbell-Johnston was the one responsible for the JRS under the Social Secretariat
before becoming an independent institution (1980-1984). He is a first-hand witness to the initial steps of
the Refugee Service.
24
with international organizations and are well situated. […] We can help with the
complexities of the problems through our many institutions.”98 In that meeting Arrupe
was clear about how the Society had “the means to influence structures and orientate
policies,” 99 and the need of work on root causes and not just to touch symptoms: “we
have the structures to do this.”100 This is why, as I will develop further, the JRS is not
just a work of charity or one further institution of the Jesuit social apostolate, but a
challenge to every corner of the Jesuit apostolic body. This is why the current
international director of JRS affirms that it is not “just a Jesuit-run apostolic work for
refugees, but it is Jesuit by its very nature.”101
I am not saying that Arrupe was simply answering from an organizational
perspective, trying to take advantage of the Jesuit structure, maximizing the outcomes
with their current resources. However, once we have a global vision, the trick is that
Ignatius’ criteria of urgency, the complexity of the problem, and especially the lack of
others to attend the need and the greater universal good102 transform the organizational
question into a key variable for discerning the mission. The new global context, the
complexity of the refugee problem, and the capability of the Jesuits to give services “that
are not being catered for sufficiently by other organizations and groups”103 put the
Society of Jesus on the spot of actualizing its charism while reading the sign of the times.
That means that the Jesuit potentiality was not a secondary argument in the foundation of
98
That means that Arrupe is highlighting four different potentialities of the Society since the
beginning of his thought: I’m following the previous quote from Campbell-Johnston: “the Society is
everywhere (transnationality) and has information covering the whole world (informational management).
We are already in contact with international organizations and are well situated (network with international
agencies). […] We can help with the complexities of the problems through our many institutions (multilevel set of institutions).” Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 41. The brackets are mine.
Exactly the same emphasis can be found among the objectives for JRS in the foundational letter:
(a) develop a network of contacts to coordinate, (b) collect information for new opportunities, (c) to act as
a switchboard among the Jesuit provinces and international agencies, and (d) to encourage different
Jesuit’s works to research into the root of the problem to take preventive actions. I’m omitting two aims
oriented toward the inside of the Society: to conscientise about the importance of this apostolate, and to
direct the Society’s attention towards those groups otherwise unknown. Ibid, 29.
99
Arrupe, “Why Get Involved?” 162.
100
Arrupe, “Why Get Involved?” 164.
101
Balleis, Op.Cit. 102.
102
Constitutions [622-623].
103
Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 28.
25
the JRS but a primary motivation, if not the most important one, because the main
argument was that “we are particularly well fitted to meet this challenge.”104
What is at stake here is the opportunity cost. Arrupe is saying that given our
infrastructure and potentialities, taking into account our vision and understanding of
mission, the Society of Jesus has real responsibility to answer to this problem: “The
Society has the spirit, mobility, and structures to offer this service.”105 The fidelity to our
vocation claims this: “We have the men, the facilities, and the theology. We are going for
it.”106
1.5.2 An Intentional New Structure
Even though the organizational dimension is not yet my focus, my last question
here is why Arrupe didn’t answer this apostolic challenge in the usual way? Why did he
develop a different infrastructure when many others initiatives with refugees were going
on within the provinces?107 Why did he start a new and different international body of
the Society, parallel or alternative to the traditional provincial structures?108
Arrupe was clear in that the refugee answer should be a commitment “of the
whole institute,”109 the universal Society, not of any particular province.110 It appeared
that the universality of the intended answer, the variety of institutions involved, and the
worldwide nature of the problem being addressed, were asking for a new supra
provincial structure able to coordinate and develop international strategies involving
people and resources from more than one Jesuit province.
A structure like this was to be managed by the Social Secretariat in Rome, even
when there was initial opposition to this idea111 since the job of the Curia was considered
104
Ibid.
Arrupe, “Why Get Involved?” 18.
106
Testimony of Vicent O’Keefe about Arrupe in Jim McDermott, “Seizing the Imagination,”
America Magazine (November 12, 2007):16.
107
In the first meeting in the curia they were talking about the different refugee-related initiatives
that were already going on the worldwide Society. There were examples in East Asia, in India, in USA,
and Africa.
108
Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 100.
109
"Our service to refugees is an apostolic commitment of the whole Society." ActRSJ 20:320 in
O’Brien, Op.Cit. 19.
110
"What was lacking was a corporate, concerted effort to link these more particular Jesuits
Commitments." Ibid, 13.
111
This was changed by Kolvenbach 4 years later when he made of JRS an independent
institution from the Social Justice Secretariat. Vella, Everybody's Challenge, 45. “The central government
105
26
to be encouraging others to develop their own apostolic initiatives. The JRS idea was not
only a break with traditional organizational models but also a challenge to the idea that
the Curia shouldn’t assume apostolic ventures. Campbell-Johnston112 confirms that from
the outset, Arrupe recognized the need for a new structure led from Rome, and was
convinced that problems of a universal nature were to be answered with universal
solutions. These global options were going to be the ones that determine the real stature
of the Jesuit Apostolate.113 The Curia was considered to be “the best place for the JRS to
operate, because many provinces were going to be directly involved.”114 Luis Magriñá,
former JRS international director, insists that the JRS has a flexibility to answer new
situations and the needs of refugees, which would not be possible in the situation of
being exclusively dependent to the provinces.115
The JRS, a mission-driven and supra-provincial institution, appeared as a
solution that could better counter the endogamy and lack of global vision of provincial
structures, embodying at the same time the Ignatian universality and mobility that Arrupe
was dreaming for in the renewal of the Society of Jesus. Because of its international
vision and commitment, the JRS proved to be the first Jesuit global apostolic body,
structurally independent from any province but, at the same time, a commitment of the
whole Society to “endeavor to work mainly through men in the provinces themselves.”116
1.6 Conclusion
In February 1990, Fr Kolvenbach promulgated the official documents of the JRS
and, following the same spirit of its founder, affirmed that “the Society’s universality,
is considered an intromission on the local level if it asks for help to global projects.” Arrupe, Cartas, 78. A
few years after, Arrupe was already aware that “there are still some who are rather skeptical about
collaborations at the international level.” Arrupe, Other Apostolates Today, 186-187. He tried to remind
them of the international character of our vocation. Arrupe also denounces that the dangers of “exaggerated
provincialism, nationalisms or regionalism are in a way greater” than the risk of a universal escape from
concrete needs and responsibilities. Ibid, 191.
112
Michael Campbell-Jonhston, Personal Interview by e-mail, 18 December 2007.
113
Arrupe, Cartas, 78.
114
Michael Campbell-Johnston, Personal Interview.
115
As an example, he argues that the JRS works in Namibia, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, where
there is no official Society of Jesus. Who else could take the decision of going to work to these places?
Lluis Magriñá, interview by author, e-mail, 12 December 2007. In this sense Kolvenbach was convinced
that the Society’s services through the JRS was “one real test of our availability today.” Kolvenbach,
Review, 55.
116
Vella, Everybody’s Challenge, 30.
27
our mobility, and above all our apostolic availability are the qualities rooted in our
tradition which should help us to meet the challenges offered by the refugee crisis of our
time.”117 This is what I seek to demonstrate in this paper. Following the same insight, he
also stated: “I have stressed the importance of this apostolate […] as a significant step
towards our renewal, personal and corporate, in availability, mobility and
universality.”118
This paper shows how the Jesuit Refugee Service can be understood as an
institution trying to express the Ignatian global vision according to the signs of the times,
“applying to present conditions and trends, the principles that have always been
characteristic of our apostolic life and activity.”119
I do not pretend to idealize the early Society or to pigeonhole the Ignatian
charism into being normative in our days. However, if I am going to defend that the JRS
is a model for a global Jesuit apostolic answer, I need to start with its foundations: to
understand what Don Pedro had in mind when he launched the proposal of this totally
new apostolic structure. The strength of the argument lies, I think, not in the specificity
of the refugee problem, but on the intentionality of Arrupe in terms of renewal of the
dynamism and universality of the mission of the Society of Jesus.
I have tried to use both the documents and history of the first Jesuits as
foundational sources for the Jesuit charism. But even when it would be bizarre to try to
project my categories on the early Society or to replicate their structures in our days, it
would be equally blind to deny the specificity of the Jesuit charism and to attempt to
express this tradition in a way appropriate to our times. I have also used letters from
Arrupe and documents from the first meetings of the JRS to demonstrate my hypothesis.
This has been my intention. I am with Blake,120 O’Malley,121 Raper, Balleis,122 and
Magriñá, and many others who have seen in the Jesuit Refugee Service a remarkable
intuition of Arrupe, a provocative way of rethinking the Jesuit apostolic answer in our
117
Kolvenbach, Review, 55.
Ibid, 47.
119
Arrupe, Other Apostolates, 192.
120
O’Brien, Op.Cit. vii.
121
O’Malley, “Five Missions,” 33.
122
Also Peter Balleis affirmed that “the JRS is by the nature of its process of foundation and
growth very similar to the Society of Jesus in its early years” Balleis, Op.Cit. 107.
118
28
times, a new type of organizational structure different from the usual Jesuit way, and
mainly a potential model to re-imagine a future Jesuit mission that is truly global.
How it can be understood as a model, and what types of lessons we can learn
from it, are subjects for the following chapters. Here it has been enough to argue the
latent adaptation of the Ignatian global vision that relies on its foundations. This allows
me to defend its suitability as a model for modern Jesuit global apostolic presences.
29
Chapter II. Globalization and Jesuit Mission
In the first chapter of this thesis I explained how the JRS initiative is rooted in the
global vision of the early Society of Jesus and how Arrupe, with the founding of this new
institution, was trying to respond to global changes in an Ignatian way. The next step is
to explain how the concept of mission is being transformed by developments after
Vatican II and the globalized context. My aim below is to demonstrate how globalization
is transforming the Society’s mission and the Jesuit ways of agency towards a
transnational, faith-based activism to promote the common good and human solidarity.
The purpose of this chapter is to show that the Jesuit Refugee Service is a common
apostolic work realized by the universal Society and thus can be considered one of the
structures for promoting human solidarity, social justice, and universal charity123 that the
Church develops throughout the world as part of her proposal of global solidarity.
2.0 Introduction
Arrupe was considered a visionary and a prophet, but he did not start from zero. It
is no mere coincidence that this same Arrupe lived through Vatican II and experienced
first-hand some of the deepest changes in the Catholic Church to occur in centuries. The
idea of the Jesuit Refugee Service flows from a concept of mission and justice that the
Jesuits were nourishing at that time along with the Council, and also as a way of
answering the signs of the global times. How could the Society of Jesus start a
humanitarian and spiritual project which is closer to an NGO than a classic missionary
enterprise?
The background of my research here is to show why the Church is developing
part of its public mission through networks of faith-based institutions working for global
justice and solidarity. My intention is to demonstrate that the Church, and the Society of
Jesus as part of it, has been passing through two different stages that have affected the
concept of mission and therefore its public role. The two stages are: (1) a period of
modernization after Vatican II that changed the terms of the mission into a new
engagement with the world in addition to a straight forward proposal of justice and
123
Populorum Progressio (PP) 43-75.
30
integral human promotion; and (2) a period of “global awareness” that shaped the
Church’s answer to the globalization process by emphasizing certain dynamics and
structures needed to develop a new proposal of solidarity in a global world.
As a result of these two movements, the Society of Jesus integrates the justice
principle as a cross-cutting dimension of its whole mission, and realizes the potential of
its infrastructure and the need for new structures to address the broad dimensions of this
global context. Interdisciplinary networking and partnership are the basic paths to
develop these new modes of agency. Within this framework, JRS can be understood as
an integral part of the Jesuit mission, as an embodiment of the dimension of justice that
stems from faith, and as a model for institutional incarnation of the Jesuit global
vocation.
2.1 Jesuits & Social Engagement After Vatican II
Concepts like justice, love of neighbour, welcoming of the alien, and care for the
needy are part of the Hebrew Scriptures, and witness to the social mission that the
Church has borne since its beginning. But the way of understanding the Church’s social
involvement has been changing throughout the ages. Especially important is the moment
the Church recognized the autonomy of the temporal sphere, acknowledging a new
relationship with the world, in what some scholars call “voluntary disestablishment.”124
To address the evolution of the concept of social mission, I need to briefly review that
moment, Vatican II. Key developments of the Second Vatican Council include: the
radically new concept of religious freedom and the depolitization of the relations
between Church and state implicit in Dignitatis Humanae; and the global proposal of
social justice and legitimation of the social action we find in Gaudium et Spes. Only then
is it possible to trace the origin of the public church and the modern link between
evangelization and human promotion. Finally, it will be possible to understand the
parallel evolution of the concept of mission in the Society of Jesus.
124
José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994) 62. The same expression is used also in Jeff Haynes, “Transnational religious actors and
international politics,” in Third World Quarterly, vol. 22, nº 2, 2001, 151.
31
2.1.1 Voluntary disestablishment
Religious freedom meant new relationships between Church and state, faith and
political power, and implied separation but not necessarily privatization.125 Accepting the
inviolable right to privacy and the sanctity of freedom of conscience, the Catholic
Church started going public in a distinctively modern way.126 The Church’s mission
incorporated new concepts like inculturation and assimilation, moving closer to an
authentic encounter and collaboration with other cultures and religions rather than the
traditionally militant posture of the Church. Other consequences of Dignitatis Humanae
(DH) include new ways of understanding the revelation and the recognition of the
ineffable mystery of God at work in all religious traditions. The new focus on
ecumenical and interreligious sensibilities helped to reduce the Church’s exclusivism and
its aggressive confessional posture towards others.
Vatican II was also the moment for a key change in the perception of social
ministry. Renewed by the idea of engagement with the world, the Church approved a
more activist Catholicism. In Gaudium et Spes (GS) the Church is deeply committed to
the pursuit of justice convinced of the need to achieve the genuine good of the human
race.127 Having recovered the idea of the holiness of the world, the Church revised its
conceptions of missionary purpose and the relationship of direct proselytization to social
and political development.128 John XXIII and Vatican II broadened the universality and
stressed the transnational scope of Church social teaching by setting new directions for
Catholic social thought. Paul VI followed this direction in his emphasis on the role of the
Church in a proposal of integral development.129 In 1971 the Synod of Bishops’ “Justice
in the World” clearly affirmed that work for justice and transformation of the world
125
Casanova develops this idea regarding how the disestablishment does not mean privatization.
The Church accepts disestablishment from the state and also from political society, but it doesn’t intend to
be isolated from public dimensions. For this author, and many others that follows, the public locus of the
church is no longer the state or political society but rather, civil society. Casanova, Op.Cit. 62.
126
Casanova, Op.Cit. 57.
127
David O’Brien and Thomas Shannon eds, Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary
Heritage, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992) 164-165.
128
Ivan Vallier, “The Roman Catholic Church: A Transnational Actor,” in International
Organization, Vol. 25, No. 3, Transnational Relations and World Politics. (Summer, 1971): 498.
129
The concept of integral development in solidarity already appears in GS 64-65. The service to
“the whole men” is affirmed in PP 14, the approach to development in PP 20, the integral development of
the human race in a spirit of solidarity in PP 43, and the role of the Church in development in PP 13.
32
“fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel.”130 In 1975
the Pope expressed clearly the direct relationship between evangelization and human
promotion, linking redemption with “injustice to be combated and justice to be
restored.”131 The step was completed: the Church had made human development and
social promotion an integral part of its ministry.
2.1.2 A New Public & Prophetic Church
Parallel to this process of aggiornamento, and also understandable as one of its
motivations, the process of secularization threatened the Catholic Church especially in
Western Europe. The change in the configuration of national politics relegated religion to
a position of lesser importance. What some theorists saw as the privatization of religion
and even the beginning of the end for religious institutions, Casanova defends as merely
a differentiation of spheres and the adaptation of religion to new circumstances.132 In
fact, concurrent to the development of secularization theories, religion and religious
groups strengthened their presence in the international political arena.133 This, following
Casanova, contradicts the claims of privatization of other theorists and is the origin of the
concept of “public religion” as the renewed contribution of churches to public virtue and
the common good.
In this pluralistic and secular context the public dimension of the Church
becomes critical and its place in a modern society can only be understood as part of civil
society in a clear stance of engagement as part of her mission. 134 Religion has an
irreplaceable part in the public discourse135 and it must be present in the public sphere as
130
Justice in the World, Statement of the World Synod of Catholic Bishops, 1971, n.6.
Evangelii Nuntiandi, 31. This line will continue with Redemptoris Missio (RM) 58 and
Sollicitudo rei socialis (SRS) 30.
132
Casanova’s proposal is one of the key references in the area of Secularization scholarship. His
theory is called “deprivatization of religion” and urges religion to end its isolation in the private sphere
against the pretension of autonomy from moral norms of the other differentiated spheres. Casanova,
Op.Cit. 46.
133
Ibid, 3.
134
I am following certain public theology scholars such as Robert Bellah, José Casanova, Bryan
Hehir, John Courtney Murray, and David Hollenbach.
135
Robert W. McElroy, The Search for an American Public Theology. The Contribution of John
Courtney Murray (New York: Paulist Press, 1989) 96.
For Robert Bellah religious bodies are an important part of this concept of the public because they
enter into the common discussion about the public good. This is from the Founders of American republic.
They believed that religious belief made an essential contribution to the responsible citizenry of a
131
33
part of the common discussion of the public good.136 That is what Casanova calls a
“return to the sacred”137 while affirming that public religion will be compatible with
liberal freedoms only from the civil society level.138
This new understanding of the Church emphasizes certain functions such as: (1)
embodying a prophetic and critical voice; (2) engaging as a social agent; and (3) shaping
public values.139 After Vatican II the Church cannot avoid to look viewing these
dimensions as part of its identity and vocation. Himes and Himes140 affirm that the
Church can be a public church if: (a) we accept the autonomy of other social institutions;
(b) we accept some responsibility for the wellbeing of the wider society; and (c) if we are
committed to work with other institutions to shape the common good for all. Vatican II
has planted the seeds for the possibility of a Catholic public church. Only since 1965
have Catholics been able to fulfill these three requirements.
2.1.3 Justice and the Society of Jesus
In the Society of Jesus there is no doubt about the locus of the promotion of
justice as an integral part of its mission. Since the beginning, the first companions
dedicated part of their time to relieve the needy, especially in Rome, and Ignatius was
quite insistent on the importance of the works of direct apostolates.141 But it was
especially after GC 32 that Jesuits became committed to the “faith that does justice” and
this is reflected in their emphasis on the social apostolate and structures for social work
democratic republic. This is the reason behind the 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution. Bellah, Robert et
al., The Good Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, 180.
136
The idea is that public discourse is the ongoing conversation of civil society, which covers the
political community outside of the market and the administrative state, and holds the common good as an
ethical responsibility. What is different from the public order is that this is effectively the responsibility of
the state.
137
José Casanova, Op.Cit. 216.
138
Ibid, 217.
139
The Church’s responsibility is wider than herself and Christian history is full of examples of
this prophetic tradition. She is a carrier of an alternative tradition founded in moral integrity and selfgiving. Casanova and Murray defend that the Church should maintain the principle of the common good
against individual modern liberal theory. Authors like Metz work from the idea of hope linked with the
eschatological promises of the scriptural tradition (peace, freedom, justice, reconciliation). These powerful
ideas cannot be made private and they encourage us towards social responsibility. Metz defends the idea
that the Church has to be a critical institution because Christian hope is “a stimulator of active shaping of
the world.” Johannes B. Metz, Theology of the World (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 150.
140
Michael J. Himes and Kenneth R. Himes, Fullness of Faith: The Public Significance of
Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1993) 2.
141
Paschal Mwijage, “Historical Origins of our Jesuit Commitment to Justice,” Promotio Iustitiae
76 (2002/1): 3-7.
34
that complement a traditional educational infrastructure. In the first chapter, I described
the Jesuit Mission in terms of the apostolic sense emphasized by the first companions. 142
In the Formula of the Institute of 1550 this mission is expressed as “defense and
propagation of the faith and the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine.”143 What
was this “journey of faith”144 that led the Society to formulate the contemporary Jesuit
mission in terms of the “service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute
requirement”?145
This process, coherent with the evolution of the Catholic Social Teaching, started
with GC 24, which slightly began to show the need for promotion of labour
associations,146 growing in following congregations into “an urgent ministry of our
times,”147 and leading to the establishment of the social apostolate as a key ministry in
the mission of the Society.148 One of the keys of this evolution can be found in what
Peter Bisson called “a new comprehensive understanding of mission”149 that came with
GC 31. In the documents of that congregation a corporate concept of Jesuit Mission can
be traced for the first time. Expressions like “Jesuit mission” or “Mission of the Society”
are used in the documents of that general congregation, providing the seed of a future
global consciousness. That congregation oriented the Social apostolate towards a social
action that configures the social structures, “to build a fuller expression of justice and
charity into the structures of human life in common.”150
GC 32, the Arrupe’s Congregation, was a definitive turning point in which the
Society of Jesus established social justice work as a constitutive dimension of its
142
See “Sense of Apostolic Mission,” in section 1.3.2 of this thesis.
Formula of the Institute [1].
144
“In response to the Second Vatican Council, we, the Society of Jesus, set out on a journey of
faith as we committed ourselves to the promotion of justice as an integral part of our mission,” GC 34, d3,
1.
145
CG 34, d4, 2.
146
Fernando Franco, “Faith and Justice” in José García de Castro (Dir), Diccionario de
Espiritualidad Ignaciana (Santander : Mensajero-Sal Terrae, 2007) 877-885.
147
GC 28, d29, 5.
148
Janssens, Instruction on the Social Apostolate, 10 October 1949.
It is important for my argument that already in this document the difference between works of
mercy and social apostolate work is clear. The social action that Jassens is asking for is a action toward the
causes, the unjust structures. This is clearly different from the social action oriented to solving temporary
the pain and suffering. Franco, Op.Cit. 879.
149
Peter Bisson, Engaged Religion and Cosmopolitan Identities: A Christian Example,
Unpublished Work, 10.
150
GC 31, d32, 1.
143
35
mission. This congregation can be considered the interpretation of the mission of the
Society in the light of Vatican II, a re-expression of the Jesuit Mission of GC 31
generating a whole new religious identity for the Society of Jesus.151 Again, the
Trinitarian inspiration of Ignatius,152 expressed in a masterly way in the contemplation
on the Incarnation, is the composition of place to rethink the mission.153 Here the Jesuits
find their theological roots for the universality of the mission, but especially for its selfunderstanding as collaborators with the Son on His mission of redemption for the whole
world. The traditional salvation and perfection of souls is translated as the total and
integral liberation of man, and is understood as the specifically Jesuit contribution to the
“defense and propagation of faith and the promotion of justice in charity.”154
In 1995, the dimensions of culture and dialogue with other traditions enriched the
concept of justice of GC 32 and the awareness of God working already in the world,
issuing a call to join his mission, “on his terms, and in his way,”155 is the source of the
Jesuit impetus to dialogue, openness, cosmopolitanism, and optimist engagement with
the whole creation. Inculturation and dialogue become essential elements of the Jesuit
way of proceeding in mission.156
The novelty of this evolution is the appearance of the concept of justice as an
integrative principle for the whole mission, moved by “very similar and very insistent
requests”157 from Jesuits all around the world. Preparing GC 32 Arrupe did not speak
about a social sector, “he spoke clearly about the fact that all the works of the Society
should be re-thought in the spirit of what today we call the promotion of justice.”158 At
GC 34 “the vast majority of the Jesuits have integrated the social dimension into [their]
151
Ibid, 2.
See “Trinitarian Foundation,” Section 1.3.1 of this thesis.
153
The most important decrees about mission in the last congregations used this contemplation as
a framework to understand the mission of the Society: GC 32, d4: “Our Mission Today” and GC34, d2:
“Servants of Christ Mission.” It is interesting how the GC 35 decree on mission “Challenges to our
mission, today sent to the frontiers,” uses the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus (Lc 4,18-19) and
the vision of the Storta as the framework to understand the mission of reconciliation.
154
GC 32, d2, 11-12.
155
GC 34, d26, 8.
156
GC 34, d2, 14-21 y GC 35 Draft of Decree on Mission, 3
157
GC 32, d4, 28.
158
Peter H. Kolvenbach, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice,” Promotio Iustitiae
96 (2007/3): 11.
152
36
Jesuit identity and into the awareness of our mission in [all other dimensions].”159 The
promotion of justice is not one apostolic area among others, but rather, “it should be the
concern of our whole life and a dimension of all apostolic endeavors.”160 The deep
change was that the commitment to social justice became corporative, and founded in a
“reconstructed religious identity,”161 in which the promotion of justice is
indispensable. 162
Synthesizing the progress of the four General Congregation after Vatican II, the
complementary norms state that the contemporary Jesuit mission is “the service of faith
and the promotion in society of that justice of the Gospel which is the embodiment of
God’s love and saving mercy.”163 The recently concluded GC 35 recognized the ongoing
process of renewal and adaptation of our mission and way of proceeding after Vatican II,
stating and confirming once more “the integrating principle of our mission is the
inseparable link between faith and the promotion of the justice of the Kingdom.”164 Faith
and justice, integral to all Jesuit ministries and lives, “remain at the heart of our
mission.”165 This new corporative sense of mission is the one that later will be
globalized. This option, as the last General Congregation said, “changed the face of the
Society.” 166
2.2 Global Mission for Global Times
Until now I have been chronicling a process that can be described as
modernization of the Church; here I want to address globalization as the expansion of
159
Peter H. Kolvenbach, “On the Social Apostolate,” Promotio Iustitiae 73 (2003): 20-26.
GC 34, d4.
161
Peter Bisson argues that since then the Jesuits have progressively “reconstructed their
corporate religious identity in response to an activist-type of commitment to social transformation,
construed as a religious experience.” Peter Bisson, A Case of Engaged Christianity: Religious Identity and
Political Engagement in the Jesuits, Non Published Work, 2.
162
“The Society should commit itself to work for the promotion of justice. Our apostolate today
urgently requires that we take this decision. (…) Since evangelization is proclamation of that faith which is
made operative in love of others, the promotion of justice is indispensable to it.” GC 32, d4, 28.
163
GC34, D2, 3 (Quoting GC33, D1, 32) and NC 245 2; Peter Hans Kolvenbach, “On the Social
Apostolate”, 22.
164 GC 34, D 4, 14, cited in GC 35 Draft of Decree on Mission 2-3. Also about Justice of the
Kingdom: CG 32, d4, 18.
165
GC 35 Draft of Decree on Identity, 15.
166
GC 35 Draft of Decree on Identity, 15.
160
37
modernization on a global scope.167 Below I will demonstrate how the mission of the
Church, after being modernized by Vatican II, must take into account this phenomenon.
Having clarified the social mission of the Church, I want to focus on the dynamic of
widening its scope along with the global trends. The idea is (1) to understand the role of
religion in global society, (2) to see the response of the Catholic Church, (3) examine
how these global processes affect the Church’s mission, and finally (4) to investigate
precisely how the Society of Jesus is embedded in the same process.
2.2.1 Globalization and Religion
What Casanova refers to in terms of public religion and secularization, Peter
Beyer and Robert J. Schreiter do in terms of the public influence of religion and global
society. Each author attempts to define, or at least to record the challenges of defining,
what is the phenomenon of globalization. I already started this section with one
definition: an objective process of “extension of the [positive and negative] effects of
modernity to the entire world,” but I should also include the effect of communication and
technology in what can be seen as “the increase of networks of interdependence among
people”168 around the whole planet. That is to say that Globalization is largely about
relationships169 and interdependence mainly in the economic, technological, political,
and cultural areas.
Along the same line as Casanova’s spheres of differentiation, Beyer talks about
functionally specialized social systems (economy, politics, science-technology, health,
167
I am following Peter Beyer in the idea of Globalization theories as developments of the
fundamental modernization thesis. Peter Beyer, Religion and Globalization (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 1994) 8. I have to clarify that Peter Beyer is analyzing the role of religion in a Global society
from his sociological perspective, based in Nicklas Luhmann. The central role of communication as
characterization of the “social” is typical of these authors. Taking into account that communication
changes are a basic part of the global novelty, I think that his analysis could be valid as a way of
understanding the role of religious institutions on a new communicative global reality. In this sense, for
Beyer religion is, sociologically speaking, a certain variety of communication.
168
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S.Nye, “Globalization: What’s New? What’s Not? (And So
What?)” Foreign Policy (Spring, 2000): 105, in David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian
Ethics (New York : Cambridge University Press, 2002) 213.
169
Thomas Massaro, “Judging the Juggernaut: Toward an Ethical Evaluation of Globalization,”
Blueprint for Social Justice 56:1 (September 2002) 3.
38
education, media, etc…) created by the expansion of modernity to the whole globe. 170
But there are some areas of social life not reached by any functional subsystem171 and
some failing effects of the global system,172 which he calls “residual matters.”173
Religion may well be a functionally differentiated subsystem “specialized in the
immanent/transcendent type of communication,”174 but after Vatican II, as I have argued
in the first section of this chapter, this “function” of religion cannot be accepted by itself
without a coherent engagement with the world. By nature, religion needs to interact with
other functional subsystems because it points to the wholeness of human life. This
holistic tendency of religion makes it impossible to reduce it to just a functional
subsystem with public influence comparable to others.175 Sociologically speaking,
religion’s tendency to affect other spheres of life (called religious performance), 176
makes it potentially able to address globalization’s “residual matters.” In this sense,
religion is not primarily a global functional system, but it is able to integrate areas in
which those systems are failing or simply not present. This role of religion as integrating
dimension of what the functional systems do not reach, is called antisystemic by
Schreiter, and can provide the “telos” that a global system lacks, offering a vision of
coherence and order.177
170
Whose specialization generates an instrumental orientation and a strong individuation of
persons as no one of the subsystems of society encompasses all aspects of their lives. Beyer, Religion and
Globalization, 100.
171
The specialization of these systems left a great gap of social communication undetermined:
private sphere, life-world, domain of expressive action. This is precisely where much of social life takes
place.
172
The diffusion of values like equality and progress is generating the awareness of the great
inequalities promoted by the same system. “The global system has built into it inherent contradictions
between systemic effects and systemic values.” Beyer, Religion and Globalization, 101.
173
Residual Matters are problems that the dominant subsystems create and do not solve,
“everything from personal or groups identity or ecological threats to increasing disparities in wealth and
power.” Ibid, 104-105
174
Referring then to the pure religious communication, devotion, cure of souls, salvation, etc.
Ibid, 102.
175
Even those religious traditions like the Catholic Church aspiring to universality do not envision
universality as operating in the manner of global systems. Schreiter, Op.Cit. 15.
176
The attempt to have an impact in other spheres, says Beyer, to have public influence, displays a
performance orientation, the wish to apply the religious modality effectively to matters that are not
“purely” religious. Beyer, Religion and Globalization, 144.
177
Schreiter, Op.Cit. 16.
39
The authors consulted178 agree on explaining the role of religion in a globalized
society as based on both (1) social forms specialized in religious communication
(traditional forms of religion), and (2) performance-oriented religious agents.179 This
second type of agent is the objective of my research: religiously based social movements
as new ways of religious agency within the public sphere. In Beyer’s terminology these
movements should be focused in “residual matters” promoting “antisystemic action
based on central prosystemic values.”180 That means that these actions (a) mobilize
beyond just religious matters, around residual problems of global society, and (b) address
the problems by influencing the operation of the functional systems using the prevailing
global values, and not in opposition to them.
These scholars of sociology are suggesting that in a global society the privatized
religious function should be complemented by the public and influential religious
performance,181 and the link between both aspects of religion is what are called
“religiously based social movements.”182 All the research points towards the idea of the
Church carrying out its social mission mainly through these types of movements, as
intermediary bodies of civil society.183 Casanova states clearly that only through civil
society can the Church be consistent with modern universalistic principles and
178
I am using Roberston, Beyer, and Schreiter. But even Casanova is in accord with this
conclusion.
179
To defend the need of performance-oriented religious agents should not obscure the fact that
religion exists “for the shake of worship, devotion, and other religious practices.” The point is that pure
religion also depends on the value of its applications to non-religious problems to have broader societal
influence. “As long as there are social forms that specialize in this sort of communication, and as long as
the carriers of those social forms reflect them as religion, then a religious subsystem in global society
exists.” Peter Beyer, "What Counts as Religion in Global Society?" in Peter Beyer (ed.), Religion in the
Process of Globalization (Würzburg : Ergon, 2001) 125-150, 146.
180
Beyer, Religion and Globalization, 101. The “anti-systemic” role of religion can be “prosystemic” regarding the moral values like equality and freedom, that inherent to the social systems of
modernity, but are also used by religions as foundations for criticizing the dangerous effects of the system.
181
Beyer studies performance-oriented religio-social movements within the different kind of
social systems through which religion attains authoritative form in contemporary society (organizations,
social movements, societal subsystems, social networks).
182
Beyer is aware that this type of proposal is a significant performance direction just for the
liberal religious option. “While conservative religious outlooks gravitate more toward religio-political
movements, liberal ones seem to favour the type of aims and strategy associated with new social
movements.” Beyer, Religion and Globalization, 98. Liberal for Beyer connotes the religious answer that
focuses on global culture as such. “Relativization is a positive result; openness to change is the warrant for
the continued authenticity of the tradition.” Ibid, 10. What distinguishes liberal religion is its positive
resonance with the core values and orientations of modernity and globalization: egalitarian and inclusive
progress on the basis of an adaptive, cognitive style. Ibid, 145.
183
T. Howland Sanks, “Globalization and the Church’s Social Mission,” Theological Studies 60
(1999), 625-651, 644-645.
40
differentiated structures.184 Bisson185 also remarks that some of the public resurgence of
religion, what he calls “engaged religion,”186 tends to be active in the sphere of civil
society. Beyer recommends the use of interaction-based social networks and
organizations, worthy bases for wider social movements, especially those focused on
social justice issues.
In today’s world, even the casual observer encounters innumerable initiatives
fostered through civil society from grass-root organizations, national and international
NGOs, Churches, educational institutes, governmental and multilateral organizations,
etc… This spectrum of different levels of participation and interaction in the global civil
society cannot be ignored when considering methods of agency for the Church’s social
mission in a global world. The next section investigates what the Church does say about
globalization, examining its proposal for that telos, and how to embody this performance.
2.2.2 The Church’s Answer to Globalization
In official documents, traces of the Church’s awareness of globality may be
discerned as early as 1961 with John XXIII and his sense of the growing interdependence
of peoples and the need for global political structures.187 Vatican II insisted on the fact of
increasing human interdependence188 and Populorum Progressio of Paul VI is the
foremost statement about the global dimension of the social question. In it he expressed
the need for “building an international order based on justice”189 and pushed for the clear
involvement of the Church in the promotion of the integral development of every human
being.190
184
Casanova, Op.Cit. 219. Casanova defends the argument that the public locus of the Church is
no longer the state or political society but, rather, civil society. Ibid, 63.
185
Peter Bisson, The Politics of Re-Enchantment: The Jesuit Involvement in Civil Society:
Religious Techniques for Social Change, Unpublished Work, 1.
186
The expression “engaged religion” is an extension of the expression “engaged Buddhism.” It
refers to forms of religious commitment which advocate social change and change in traditional religious
understandings and practices, in which the core religious ideas are reinterpreted in social terms. This form
of religious commitment is close to the poor and advocate for human rights and participation for all.
Bisson, A Case of Engaged Christianity, 4.
187
MM 53, MM 200, and PT 135. More about the worldwide dimension of the social question
appears in PP 8.
188
GS 26, GS 63.
189
PP 78.
190
PP 14.
41
In brief, the Church’s major contribution to globalization is the concept of
Solidarity. Through the years the Church has been shaping its answer to fit the global
times, and the challenge is to ensure “a globalization in solidarity,”191 proposing a
particular holistic vision of the human being and the human race192 in an attempt to
illumine moral dimensions of the current interdependency.193 The Church promotes an
integral “development of the human race in the spirit of solidarity,”194 in which the
whole human family is responsible for the common progress of humanity.
The primary treatment of solidarity is contained in Solicitudo Rei Socialis, where
John Paul II proposed solidarity as the critical moral and social attitude and the human
face of globalization. Solidarity is the “firm and persevering determination to commit
oneself to the common good”195 and to the good of all, because in this interdependent
world the human family is aware of the responsibility that everybody has for every other.
We are linked together “by a common destiny, which is to be constructed together.”196
Solidarity provides a telos197 for a guiding vision of humanity in this global
context. The central task of the Church is taming198 this inexorable dynamic. This
solidarity implies the concept of common good, shapes the understanding of justice, and
leads us to an integral development. “The solidarity we propose is the path to peace and
at the same time to development.”199
191
John Paul II, Message for World Day of Peace, 1 January 1998, n.3.
PP 121.
193
“Globalization, a priori, is neither good nor bad. It will be what people make of it. No system is
an end in itself, and it is necessary to insist that globalization, like any other system, must be at the service
of the human person; it must serve solidarity and the common good.” John Paul II, Address to the
Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 27 April 2001, n.2 “The need of a Solidarity which will take up
interdependence and transfer it to the moral plane.” SRS 26 .
194
PP 43. The development of the human race in the spirit of solidarity implies human solidarity,
social justice, and universal charity.
195
SRS 38.
196
SRS 26.
197
For Schreiter the way of injecting this telos is through global theological flows based, for
example, on the dignity of the human being, genuine peace, or the idea of reconciliation as new creation.
The model of mission for this kind of global interaction should be the elaboration of praxis around this
worthy theological heritage. The forms the Good News take in this global world should be on the praxis
around and beyond one of these telos : “The ability to provide a goal, a telos, drawing especially upon the
eschatological possibilities of Christian faith, is a special part of a new catholicity.” Schreiter, Op.Cit. 131.
198
Massaro, Judging the Juggernaut.
199
SRS 39.
192
42
2.2.3 Mission in a Global Age
If solidarity is the Church’s way of speaking about the moral dimensions of
current global interdependency, then trying to build up global networks of solidarity and
institutions promoting integral development and inclusion is the way to make
“interdependence in solidarity a realistic possibility.”200 The culture of solidarity is the
way the Church tries to influence and reshape the global flows, which previously resided
outside of its usual scope. I want to highlight some dimensions of the mission that
become especially important in this new context: (1) the value of the individual; (2)
global solidarity; (3) the relevance of the international political system; (4) transnational
structures; (5) complexity of the answers; and (6) attention to global/local tensions.
(1) Value of the Individual: The first feature of a mission for global times is the
need to affirm the value of the human person, and to measure everything by the criterion
of the effect on human well being. The defense of human dignity is central to the
Church’s identity and mission,201 based on the supreme dignity of the human person and
the consequent inalienable and inviolable rights. Vatican II already established the
human being as the source, the center, and the purpose of all socioeconomic life.202 John
Paul II introduced a novel personalist argument that provides felicitous balance between
individual and collective extremes.203 The Church cannot lose sight of the human person
“who must be at the center of every social project.” 204
(2) Global Solidarity: If the Church’s proposal for the current era of intense
globalization is the development of the human race in a spirit of solidarity, her mission
should be to promote the structures that embody this integral development for all human
beings. This includes structures for promoting human solidarity, social justice, and
universal charity.205 After the emphasis on the individual, the Church, based on our
social nature, defends the moral relevance of the common humanity, a moral community
to which all human beings belong. This is based on the concept of common good, one of
200
Hollenbach, The Common Good, 226.
LG 1, GS 42-43.
202
GS 63.
203
LE 15 – Thomas Massaro, “The Future of Catholic Social Teaching,” Blueprint for Social
Justice 54:5 (January 2001) 2.
204
John Paul II, Message for World Peace Day 1998, n.3.
205
PP 43-75.
201
43
the basic contributions the Catholic Church can inject into the global processes. The
global common good, while respecting the local or cultural communities, should
relativize these loyalties, thus making solidarity an integral part of the network of
interdependence.206 The challenge is “to ensure a globalization without
marginalization.”207
(3) Politics and The International System: The global vocation of the Church’s
mission and the exigencies of a global social justice suggest to some the need for an
international authority over all nations with the moral authority to coordinate common
responsibility towards the integral progress of humanity. John XXIII already establishes
the international dimensions of the social question, stating that discrete and isolated
states cannot solve worldwide problems.208 Moreover Pacem in Terris is especially clear
on the need for an international authority given the difficulties faced by national political
authorities in fostering the universal common good.209 Insofar as the end of all political
authority is the common good, the moral order demands a form of public global
authority210 to respond to problems of a global nature: “it is an urgent task of the
international organizations to help promote a sense of responsibility to the common
good.”211 This inclusive understanding of participation in the common good as essential
to justice has important implications in how the Church “see[s] good governance,
accountability, and the role of civil society in various levels.”212
(4) Transnational Structures: Globalization is transforming the Westphalian
state-based power politics into a global multilateral relation among international actors,
in which states are an important part, but not the only part. The Church should
incorporate the new scheme of international relations and “foster new transnational
organizations and structures to deal with forms of injustice promoted by a globalized
206
Hollenbach, Common Good, 220-227.
Ibid.
208
MM 200-202.
209
PT 135.
210
“This international collaboration on a worldwide scale requires institutions that will prepare,
coordinate, and direct it, until finally there is established an order of justice which is universally
recognized.” PP 78.
211
John Paul II, Message for World Peace Day 1998, n3.
212
Social Justice Secretariat, “Seeking Peace in a Violent World,” Promotio Justitiae 89 (2005/4)
7.
207
44
economy.”213 This means that the nation-state may not be the primary addressee of the
Church’s social mission.214 The promotion of a global solidarity implies a concept of
social justice that requires the promotion of participation in the transnational common
good and inclusion at all levels (identity, economic, participation). The Church cannot
shirk its mission as sacrament of unity across the human family.215 This shared good
makes demands regarding justice on states, on interstate organizations (both global and
regional), on transnational agents (such as corporations and NGOs), and on cultural
groups.216 This requires an apostolic body able to work at the transnational level. To
address this kind of mission, the Church needs to think globally.
(5) Complexity of the answers: The complexity of social issues in a global world
and the inadequate effects of individual efforts require the refitting of traditional answers
into a global scope. Uncoordinated local efforts cannot be the answer for global
problems. How, for example, can the preferential option for the poor be implemented
within a globalized economy?217 The Church’s mission needs to address both global
structures and rules of global processes. If the Church really wants to enact its prophetic
dimension, the advocacy requires a complex network of institutions such as grassroots
groups, strategies of public awareness, social action, NGOs, academic institutions,
research centers, and lobby groups. Only a sophisticated and concerted action at all
levels can constitute a realistic approach to the social mission of the Church in a
globalized world.
(6) Local and Global Tensions: The place of the Church, specifically defended by
Schreiter,218 is between the local and the global, attending to the context but exercising
its universalizing function, fostering global theological flows and interacting in local
cultural logics. The social mission of the Church should be “glocalized,”219 affected by
213
Sanks, Op.Cit. 640.
Ibid.
215
GS 41.
216
Hollenbach, Common Good, 226.
217
Sanks, Op.Cit. 645.
218
Robertson is the pioneer on this dialogical-oriented vision of Globalization. Schreiter is using
Roberston and Beyer for his theological proposal.
219
Sanks, Op.Cit. 636. This term is used in business to express how a global product is adapted to
fit the local particularities of each region. In social sciences it describes an active process of negotiation
between the local and the global. Sanks apply the term to theology with the idea of developing a process of
214
45
the global and narrowed down by the local, in constant dialogue with cultures, religions,
and the multiple identities at play. Here a renewed and expanded concept of catholicity
could be of help as the theological response to the challenges of globalization.220 A
Church on this frontier grows in universality, and assumes a communion ecclesiology
that merges particular and local Churches into a global Church.221
Globalization affects the Church’s mission in the sense of highlighting and
emphasizing certain dynamics and structures needed to develop its mission in a global
world. Today the Church is asked to work from its foundations of human dignity and the
social nature of the person, to think globally, to use its transnationality and
interdisciplinary body, and to find a place in the constructive dialogue of global flows
and cultural logics.
2.2.4 Globalization and Jesuit Mission
How does all of this affect the Society of Jesus? How do these orientations
toward a global religious performance affect the maximum representative of Ignatian
Spirituality, often understood as the “performative approach to faith”?222
As early as 1949, Superior General Janssens had already expressed his optimism
about the possibilities of the Society “if only we unite our forces and [work] in a spirit of
oneness.”223 The growing consciousness of being one body and the progressive
recognition of the universal scope of Jesuit mission has been constantly present in the
Jesuit documents. It was Father Kolvenbach who, in 1990, clearly expressed the opinion
that the Jesuits were not exploiting “all the possibilities given by being an international
apostolic body.”224 Further, he insisted on the debt the Society of Jesus owes to the poor
and the Church for this reason. This multiple presence is a “great but little-realized
potential of the universal Society.” Recently, John A. Coleman stated that “the paradox is
that the Jesuits sit on a stunning global network of schools, parishes, retreat centers,
dialogue in which there is a global influence that is altered by local culture and returns into the global in a
constant cycle.
220
Schreiter, Op.Cit. 128.
221
Sanks, Op.Cit. 650.
222
Mwijage, Op.Cit. 5.
223
Jean-Baptiste Janssens “Instruction On the Social Apostolate,” quoted on Kolvenbach, “On the
Social Apostolate,” 26.
224
Peter H. Kolvenbach, Address to the Congregation of Provincials, Loyola, 1990 in GC 34, D
21, n.4.
46
social institutes but seem unable to connect them together or parlay their resources into
effective global initiatives.”225 This concern comes from the evolution of the corporate
consciousness and the growing awareness of the universal scope of the Society’s mission
and the “extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and
multicultural body.”226
The need for supra-provincial or international cooperation within the Society of
Jesus has been mentioned in its documents since 1938.227 Proposals regarding the
universal good of the Society and the ability to work as one apostolic body were also
made in the congregation in which Arrupe was elected.228 GC 32 was clear on the
international dimension of the problems and the need for a consequent international
coordination.229 GC 33, in recognizing the integration of faith and justice as part of the
same Jesuit mission, stated the universality of that mission, and how it affects the whole
body of the Society.230 The need to emphasize the universality of the Jesuit vocation was
expressed in GC 34 when the Society was urged to nourish, express, and challenge its
“universal consciousness.”231 Arrupe’s vision of the potentiality of the Jesuit
infrastructures was officially expressed and amplified. Never before was the tension
between the needs of the fast-changing world and the mobility, availability, and
flexibility of Jesuit structures so clear and so urgent. The Society realizes that the new
global context for the mission requires new structures: “today many problems are global
in nature and therefore require global solutions.”232 Global apostolic networks,
transnational realities, and the new challenges and opportunities for ministry “require
225
John Coleman, “Jesuits and Globalization”, America Magazine’s Blog, 12 December 2007.
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 43.
227
In the 28th General Congregation already appeared the importance of the coordination of the
public impact of the Society at the international level (quoted in Pedro Arrupe, “Why Interprovincial and
International Collaboration?” in Pedro Arrupe, Other Apostolates Today, (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit
Sources, 1981) 193. The 30th General Congregation, in its decree n.49, a call to develop cooperation
among the provinces already shows evidence of this awareness.
228
The 31st Congregation stressed again the interprovincial cooperation to “reach out readily and
generously the universal good of the Society” (d 48, 2). In 1966 the Society of Jesus was already trying to
work “like a body that is one and apostolic” (d 48, 5).
229
It was the Arrupe congregation (GC 32, d 4, 81) the one which started the awareness of the
international dimension of the problems and the need for organizing the international answer required by
our service of faith and justice. In the first decree of the Congregation 33, the international cooperation is
again named and recommended (GC 33, d 1, 46).
230
GC 33, d 1, 38.
231
GC 34, d 21, 3.
232
NC 395 , 1.
226
47
reflection, formation, and concerted action that cross Province and even Conference
boundaries.”233 The task is already moving forward. GC 35 recognizes the growing
interconnectedness of the Jesuits and how recent years have witnessed a “concerted and
generous effort to increase inter-provincial cooperation in a variety of ways.”234
The awareness of constituting a single universal body has grown throughout the
years, but as Kolvenbach and Coleman stated, the global potential exercised in fidelity to
the Jesuit universal vocation is still not developed. The noted lack of appropriate
interrelated structures was the reason for the recommendation to develop “global and
regional networking.”235 Such networks would be capable of addressing global concerns
that at that moment were beyond the scope of the Jesuit mission. Even when the Jesuit
interconnectedness has increased,236 GC 35 has described the need for supra-provincial
structures of cooperation as an “undeniable necessity.”237 The new context for the
mission points without doubt towards a wider interconnectivity. The message is clear in
today’s globalized context: (1) networking is required for the Society of Jesus to carry
out its mission;238 and (2) the international body of the Society has great unused
potential.239
2.3 Jesuit ways of agency
All my research suggests that the Society has been engaged in a long process of
increasing awareness, not only of the social dimension, but also the open and universal
scope of its mission. I consider the social apostolate240 of the Society as the institutional
framework to test these dynamics; as it has evolved from a narrow conception of “the
social” to a transversal dimension of every Jesuit ministry. The social apostolate has been
identified as the Jesuit “corporate response to poverty, suffering and injustice,”241 and
233
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 25.
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 38.
235
GC 34, D 21, n.13.
236
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 9.
237
“We hold the conviction that today cooperation among provinces and regions to realize the
apostolic mission of the Society is an undeniable necessity.” GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 17.
238
GC 34, D 21, 13.
239
GC 34, D 21, 5.
240
The Social Apostolate consist of “social centres for research, publications and social action”
and “direct social action for and with the poor” NC 300.
241
Social Justice Secretariat, “Characteristics of the Social Apostolate,” Promotio Iustitiae 69
(1998) lv.
234
48
therefore, as the incarnation of the social dimension of the Jesuit Mission, it cannot be
considered an isolated area within the Society of Jesus. The evolution of the social
apostolate shows that Jesuits have been translating the social and global awareness into
structures and institutions; that is to say, they have been trying to embody the new
growing identity into new ways of agency. To demonstrate this I am going (1) to
describe the historical development in the Jesuit social apostolate that follows this trend;
and (2) to compare the latest positions of the social apostolate in terms of networking.
2.3.1 Evolution of the Social Apostolate
I do not wish to develop here an exhaustive history of the Jesuit social
apostolate,242 but it is important to clarify that the Jesuits started developing social
centers before World War II. Those centers engaged in teaching Catholic social teaching
to workers and promoted social groups and organizations. In 1949 Fr. Janssens appealed
to the whole Society to grow in “social attitude,”243 pushing the idea of social action
beyond the traditional works of mercy.244 It was the era of the foundation of several
social institutes for coordination and reflection that grew slowly towards the idea of
becoming instruments of social change and justice. The new goal of the social apostolate
was “to build a fuller expression of justice and charity into the structures of human life in
common.”245 By the mid-1970s, there were more than two dozen social centers
worldwide staffed by 170 full-time Jesuits.246
The movement towards Justice as an integrative principle came after GC 31 and
especially with Arrupe and his emphasis on the social dimension of all Jesuit
apostolates. 247 He actively promoted the creation of “Centros de Investigación y Acción
242
For a detailed analysis of this see: Michael Campbell-Johnston, “Evolución de la Cuestión
Social en la Compañía de Jesús: Breve Historia,” Promotio Iustitiae 66 (1997) 8-14. Michael Czerny and
Paolo Foglizzo, “The Social Apostolate in the Twentieth Century,” Promotio Iustitiae 73 (2000) 7-18.
Social Justice Secretariat, Structuring the Social Apostolate – Jesuit Social Centres, (Rome, February
2005).
243
In 1949 the General of the Society at that time, Fr. Janssens, wrote a powerful instruction with
orientations for the Social Apostolate.
244
Janssens clearly defended an idea of social action, directly oriented to eliminate the causes of
human suffering, against a good but not enough idea of works of mercy. Acta romana 12 (1954), 696.
Cited by Campbell-Johnston, Op.Cit. 3.
245
GC 31, D 32, 1.
246
Czerny, Op.Cit. 11.
247
GC 32, D 4, 9.
49
Social (CIAS)” with a prophetic mission in light of social analysis and reflection. Arrupe
set up the Jesuit Secretariat for Socio-Economic Development, today known as the
Social Justice Secretariat in Rome.248
Arrupe and GC 32 expanded social concern and the promotion of justice which
marked the Society’s whole mission and every Jesuit activity. To put this into practice,
affirmed Czerny, took a couple of decades. 249 The consequence of this integrative call
was the proliferation of a general involvement to transform social structures, and a
separation from the world of academics and theoretical reflection.250 It was a time of
crisis in the social apostolate, during which Arrupe had to work hard on the integration of
that sector within the Jesuit body.
From this point on, there has been a growing awareness of the need to link the
social apostolate with other sectors in searching for interdisciplinary action and
reflection.251 Kolvenbach’s era was the time when international meetings252 to share
experiences and networking began to take place. In 1995 the number of Jesuit social
institutes was 324253 and GC 34 stressed the social apostolate as a key structure for
fulfilling today’s mission of the Society in the service of faith.
In1995 an initiative254 to renew the identity of the Jesuit Social Apostolate was
initiated with the intention of better situating the social sector within the Society. It
perfectly fit the Society’s desire to broaden its social justice dimensions. In the same
vein, a worldwide congress of social apostolate delegates was convened in Naples in
1997. A document, named “Characteristics of the Social Apostolate,”255 was
promulgated from the outcomes of this congress, aiding the structural cohesion of the
sector.
248
This was in 1968, the main functions were (1) promoting socio-economic work and studies in
the field, (2) fostering closer contacts and the exchange of information among Jesuit social centres, (3)
ensuring an active Jesuits and so Church presence in international associations and congresses concerned
with development, and (4) working closely with Church organizations such as the Pontifical Commission
for Justice and Peace. Czerny, Op.Cit. 11. The parallels with the later foundation of JRS are striking.
249
Ibid, 13.
250
Social Justice Secretariat, Structuring the Social Apostolate, 6.
251
Ibid.
252
Villa Cavalleti (1987), India (1988), Deltroit (1991), Canada (1993). In Czerny, Op.Cit.14
253
Social Justice Secretariat, Structuring the Social Apostolate, 13.
254
It is called the initiative 1995-2005 and it was directed by Michael Czerny, the delegate for the
Social Apostolate of that time.
255
Social Justice Secretariat, “Characteristics of the Social Apostolate,” Promotio Iustitiae 69
(1998).
50
From this quick overview, some lessons can be extracted: (1) the work for social
justice is no longer a task of a single sector of the Society, but must be developed
through the whole set of Jesuit works. (2) To embody social awareness implies more
than direct social action. It also requires social research, formation, publications,
advocacy, and human development.256 (3) The social dimension of the mission needs
institutional structure to maintain the commitment, organize the efforts, and be
accountable in how this essential dimension of the Jesuit work is being developed in each
province.
The integration of Justice as an essential part of the Jesuit mission has an
institutional parallel in the integration of the social centers in the apostolic body of the
Society and their wider orientation (socio-economic development, peace, human rights,
governance, migrations, catholic social teaching, etc.) The awareness of globality is
translated into the need for partnerships with others, and the trend toward coordinated
action and network infrastructures. The history of the social apostolate shows a growing
tendency toward a greater corporative action and international coordination: from
isolated and narrowed-issue social centres to open networks of broad-based institutions
and non-Jesuit partnerships, and from communities of insertion to transversal
communities of solidarity.257 These directions clearly point toward a more
comprehensive approach and a wider and more open network structure.
2.3.2 The Era of the Networks
Coordination and networking stand as key strategies in the search for institutional
consistency in the social sector by the Society. They also are critical for new structures to
carry on with the Jesuit global mission: “The Society must therefore examine its
resources and try to assist in the formation of an effective international network so that,
also at this level, our mission can be carried out.”258 This modern strategy to fight social
injustice is rooted in global and regional networking.259 The Society of Jesus tries to
respond in an integrated manner to the global challenges, but documents are not enough.
256
Kolvenbach, “On the Social Apostolate”, 22.
Social Justice Secretariat, Globalization and Marginalization, 34.
258
GC 34, D 4, 23.
259
GC 34, D 21, 13.
257
51
With the beginning of Jubilee 2000, Kolvenbach wrote a letter to the whole
Society expressing concern about the social apostolate losing its orientation and impact.
He offered recommendations regarding the need for better communications, and
formation, where he specially emphasized that “in order to fulfill this potential and grow
as an apostolic body, the social apostolate very much needs adequate coordination.”260
The needs clearly involved organization and structures. In the same year, at the meeting
of provincials at Loyola, the topic of networking was introduced: “We notice the
increasing number of networks emerging in the Society, through which we exercise our
commitment against every form of injustice and misery.”261 Michael Czerny, then Social
Justice Secretary, with the help of some advisors, was entrusted with the task of studying
the reality of networking within the Society and suggesting some ways of proceeding.
Subsequently in 2003, the social justice secretariat finally published its “Guidelines on
Jesuit Networking in the Social Area,”262 considering networking a “new apostolic
style.”
The key word here is synergy, meaning to strengthen, create, and develop webs
of relationships that build up reality together with the Jesuit Apostolic Partners. How is
this synergy best developed? Two consistent recommendations can be found in all the
documents and experiences:
(1) Interdisciplinary and multitracking:263 Clear now is the need for different
disciplines and levels to work together, to connect “direct and organizational
involvement among the poor, reading of and research into social reality, and action on
culture and structures.”264 This is one of the most powerful potentialities of the Jesuit
infrastructure, an apostolic body present “at all the various levels from the grassroots to
international bodies, and in all the various approaches from the direct forms of service,
through working with groups and movements, to research, reflection, an publication.”265
260
Kolvenbach, “On the Social Apostolate”, 24.
Kolvenbach, Loyola 2000.
262
Social Justice Secretariat, Guidelines for Networking in the Social Area, (Rome, 2003).
263
I am taking the concept of tracks from diplomacy theory. Specifically I am taking the idea
from Elías López, who inherits the model from the works of R. Moreels and Luc Reychler. Elías López,
Incarnate Forgiveness. Gift and Task of Field Diplomats from a Christian Perspective. (Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, 1999).
264
Social Justice Secretariat, Characteristics, lvi.
265
Kolvenbach, “On the Social Apostolate”, 5.
261
52
(2) Partnership: Another clear insight is the benefit of cooperation as a positive
value, rather than as a pragmatic strategy necessitated merely by a lack of manpower.
Cooperation “it is an essential dimension of the contemporary Jesuit way of proceeding,
rooted in the realization that to prepare our complex and divided world for the coming of
the kingdom requires a plurality of gifts, perspectives, and experiences, both
international and multicultural.”266 Facing problems of great scale and complexity, the
Jesuits recognize that they need to unite their creativity, intelligence and strengths with
those of others.267 This partnership should be open to all those working for the integral
development and liberation of people, what in today’s world means to work with
“international agencies, NGOs, and other emerging associations of women and men of
goodwill.”268 The need to work together with social movements269 in order to build-up
networks to give greater power to the poor is also clearly stated.
Networking in the Society of Jesus is a way of proceeding, apostolically, that
carries out the apostolate across many of the lines which have until now been delimiting
Jesuit activities and jurisdictions.270 Curiously the document of 2003 is the last official
reference to networking in the Society, until General Congregation 35.
2.4 Jesuit Refugee Service and Jesuit Mission
As has been stated above, the Society of Jesus not only formulates its mission in
terms of Justice as an integrative principle, but also recognizes the new challenges of the
global context and the need for new structures to address the wide dimensions of its
mission in a globalized world. This new concept of mission with a global mentality and
need for structures are the previous steps we needed to understand how JRS was possible
as an apostolic body of the Society. The foundational documents and initial charter and
guidelines of the Jesuit Refugee Service are good examples of this new way of defining
the Jesuit mission.
266
GC 34, D 26, 5.
Social Justice Secretariat, Characteristics, lv.
268
Inter-Provincial and Supra-Provincial Co-operation. GC 34, D 21, 14.
269
Social Justice Secretariat, “The Social Apostolate in the Society of Jesus, Challenges and
Situation,” Promotio Iustitiae 80 (2003), 25.
270
Social Justice Secretariat, Guidelines, 4.
267
53
In the first meeting at Rome, Arrupe already affirmed that he was considering
JRS as a “new modern apostolate for the Society as a whole,”271 in no way apart for the
mainstream activities of the Society. What started as an intuition of Arrupe alone was
claimed as an element of the entire Society’s mission as part of the review of the
ministries that was addressed by GC 33.272 The refugee problem was mentioned
frequently in the postulates for that congregation.273 In 1990 Peter Hans Kolvenbach
insisted, “Our service to refugees is an apostolic commitment of the whole Society.”274
But it was not until GC 34 that the Society assumed JRS as an operational body. As
Kolvenbach said “at GC34, the society mentioned it and adopted this apostolate of JRS
as its own.”275 This congregation made official the mission of JRS to “accompany, serve
and advocate”276 for the refugees and their rights, and JRS was also confirmed as “one
means by which the Society fulfils its mission to serve faith and promote justice.”277 In
2003, Kolvenbach identified the work with migrants as an apostolic priority for the
Society,278 and in the same line, the most recent congregation confirmed JRS with its
Charter and Guidelines, as one of the apostolic priorities of the Society.279 Today we can
affirm that JRS is a “common apostolic work realized by the universal Society of
Jesus.”280 The next logical question is the following: what makes JRS so “intimately
connected”281 with the mission of the Society of Jesus?
271
Pedro Arrupe, “Why Get Involved?” Promotio Iustitiae 19 (1980): 138.
GC 33, 45.
273
Jesuit Refugee Service, Mandate and Structure of JRS: Comments on Some Documents, JRS
Internal Document, 4 June 1997, 2.
274
Vella, Everybody, 51. The Ignatian criteria for discerning the mission is what Kolvenbach
claimed in 1990 to explain why despite a decline in the number of Jesuits and the growing number of
request, the refugee work is central to the Society’s mission. His emphasis was clearly to strengthen the
link of the JRS with the structure of the Society, avoiding any kind of interpretation of JRS as a specialized
ministry for a few professionals.
275
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, “Accompany, Serve, and Advocate Their Cause: The Mission and
Identity of JRS. Address at the meeting of JRS Regional Directors on 23 June 1997,” JRS Internal
Document, 3. (A reduced version of this important document is published in Vella, Everybody, 77-79.)
276
“The Jesuit Refugee Service accompanies many of these brothers and sisters of ours, serving
them as companions, advocating their cause in an uncaring world” GC 34, D3, 65.
277
JRS Charter #7, referring to GC 34, d3, 65.
278
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach SJ, To all Major Superiors, January 1, 2003.
279
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 39-v.
280
Jesuit Refugee Service, Our Way Forward in the Context of GC35 (Rome: JRS International
Document, forthcoming).
281
JRS Charter #1.
272
54
After the two previous sections, we are in a better position to answer this
question. The development of the mission in terms of the faith that does justice allows
the Jesuits to formulate their mission as an answer to the pressing social needs of their
time. The increasing interconnectedness and awareness of global mission allows the
Society of Jesus to dream of a networked structure for social activism as an alternative to
traditional institutions.
My argument here is that JRS is part of the mission of the Society because (1) it
is a work of justice through which the Society embodies its preferential option for the
poor ,making real the commitment to a faith that does justice, and (2) it is a global
apostolic vision through which the Society embodies its global vocation according to our
times.
(1) The Church has targeted refugees and migrants as a focus of pastoral concern
and has addressed several documents reinforcing the church’s involvement in this
“shameful wound of our time.”282 For the Society, there is no doubt that JRS is a “timely
mission in the service of faith and the promotion of justice.”283 In his address to GC 35,
Pope Benedict XVI characterized JRS as one of the “latest prophetic intuitions of
Arrupe”284 stressing the role of the work with refugees in accordance with the Society’s
mission “among the poor and for the poor.”285 JRS is an international apostolic work
forming part of the social apostolate of the Society of Jesus, and as such it arises from the
very nature and mission of the Society of Jesus: “to build a fuller expression of justice
and charity into the structures of human life in common.”286 What Nadal identifies as a
central aspect of our charism, the care of those who are either totally neglected or
inadequately attended,287 GC 35 formulates as a Jesuit tradition of building bridges, of
282
As early as 1982, John Paul II wrote to the High Commissioner of the United Nations for
Refugees calling the problem of refugees “a shameful wound of our time.” Ten years later, the pontifical
council “Cor Unum” published the statement “refugees: A Challenge to Solidarity” in which along with an
analysis of the situation and claims to the international community, the concern of the Church for refugees
is stated as part of its efforts of building a civilization of love. In the meantime several references to
migrants appeared in the Church’s documents. Especially important are the papal addresses on world
migration days.
283
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, “Review of the JRS, letter to the whole Society, 14 February 1990.”
284
Benedict XVI, Address to the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, 21 February
2008.
285
Ibid.
286
NC 298 (Quoted in JRS Charter #12).
287
GC 34, d 6, 168.
55
going to the frontiers.288 This tradition is why JRS is so embedded in the mission of the
Society, because through our service to refugees Jesuits witness to the presence of God,
even in the most tragic episodes of human history.289 Following the contemplation of the
incarnation, an image deeply rooted in our charism, the Society serves the mission of the
Son in companionship with him, in the midst of the refugees, being “an effective sign of
God's love and reconciliation.”290
(2) JRS has another aspect that makes it deeply rooted in our mission. What I
have called the Ignatian global vision, animated by the global awareness already
demonstrated, makes JRS a perfect embodiment of the Jesuit vocation to “travel through
the world and live in any part of it whatsoever,” for the greater service to God and help
of the souls.291 JRS fulfills the Ignatian criteria of ministries in a globalized world as well
as the features of the Church’s mission in global times.292 That makes it a key apostolic
work worthy of being considered as model for the future. As was shown in the first
chapter, JRS embodies the call to universality, mobility, availability, which lays down
the core of our identity. Now we can add that through JRS the Society can answer
challenges impossible to address from provincial institutions, and it makes it possible to
fulfill all the criteria for choosing ministries that match the overall Jesuit mission.293
Moreover, from the specificity of its mission mainly in non-Christian environments, JRS
adds the multicultural and interreligious dialogue dimension enhanced as a key element
in the Society’s mission. Another important feature of JRS is that as part of its way of
proceeding,294 it engages in its mission with other collaborators, a key dimension of the
Mission of the Society stressed in recent congregations. This feature of JRS gives the
Society a new horizon of engagement, pointing towards a new way of deploying our
apostolic body in a global world, “facilitating the involvement of individuals and
288
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 15-17.
JRS Charter #15.
290
Ibid.
291
Constitutions [304].
292
See “Church’s Mission for Global Times,” Section 2.2.3 of this thesis.
293
Constitutions 622-623. GC34, d 6, 168. The Charter of JRS specifies the criteria to select areas
and activities, drawn from part VII of the Constitutions. JRS Charter #14. What is not said is that the JRS
itself was discerned following the same criteria.
294
JRS Guidelines #8-14.
289
56
communities, promoting regional and global cooperation and networking on behalf of the
refugees.”295
It is my hope that it is now easier to understand why an institution such as JRS is
one of the ways in which the Society of Jesus can work for the promotion of the human
dignity and integral development as well as thinking globally, using its transnationality
and interdisciplinary body. JRS can be considered one of the structures for promoting
human solidarity, social justice, and universal charity296 that the Church develops
throughout the world as part of her proposal of global solidarity. This is why the JRS
“should be considered one means by which the Society fulfills its mission to promote
justice, and has to be considered, with so many other charitable and development
activities, a real social involvement in the spirit of the Society.”297 This is why I consider
it the best example of an apostolic answer suited to our global times.
2.5 Conclusion
This chapter has consisted a brief look to the evolution of the church’s mission
and the global context on the last decades in order to understand the new model of
transnational religious institutions that I will address in the next step of the thesis. The
Catholic commitment to the justice of the Kingdom and the worldwide scope of
Church’s activities have been the two highlighted dimensions that allow me to focus on
this type of institution. The Society of Jesus, as a particular part of this Catholic Church,
is perfectly aware that “as this world changes, so does the context of our mission; and
new frontiers beckon that we must be willing to embrace.”298
In these pages I have stated key elements of why the Society of Jesus possesses
the strength for answering the challenges of globalization. (1) The concept of mission
with faith-justice as integrative principle is the proper context to develop a global
answer, and (2) the global mentality and the already formulated need of global presences
through inter-sectorial connections and supra-provincial structures.
295
JRS Charter #9.
PP 43-75.
297
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, 20 years of JRS, 24 March 2000, in Vella, Everybody, 10.
298
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Identity, 24.
296
57
The new context is modifying the Jesuit mission,299 and this mission should be
embodied through new ways of agency. I have researched both paths either for the
Church in general and the Society of Jesus in particular, to show trends and clarify
tendencies. I hope it is now clearer why the Jesuits soon started the path of embodying
their mission of building up global networks of solidarity and institutions promoting
integral development and inclusion. JRS is just an early example of this way of
embodying the mission that still has many things to teach us. How JRS develops the
mission of justice is something many have already studied, but this second institutional
and structural dimension, one that makes it a pioneer as global apostolic answer, is the
reason for my thesis, and the main topic of the third and following chapter.
299
“Globalization, technology and environmental concerns have placed in question our traditional
boundaries and have enhanced our awareness that we bear a common responsibility for the welfare of the
entire world and for its development in a sustainable and living-giving way.” GC 35, Draft of Decree on
Identity, 20.
58
Chapter III. JRS as Model for Jesuit Transnationality
3.0 Introduction
The last chapter advanced our understanding of why religious institutions are now
actors of a global civil society as part of its global mission of solidarity. I have also
demonstrated how the global organizational logic of networking is actually present in the
development of new Jesuit ways of apostolic agency. Here I address how the
opportunities of the new scenario multiply the potentiality already existing in the
transnational structures of the Society of Jesus to the extent that a serious commitment to
its universal mission cannot ignore the transnationality as a key factor in shaping its
public dimension. Are the Jesuits really taking advantage of the potentialities they have
for advancing, within their context, the promotion of solidarity and justice that stems
from faith?
In this chapter I will use particular models of religious transnational institutions
to drive the research of my case study. The goal is to understand the advantages and
potentialities of the transnational models highlighted in the Jesuit apostolic transnational
structures like JRS. By way of comparison, I will use the African Jesuit AIDS Network
(AJAN) as a current example of young Jesuit networked institution that will help me to
end up with an initial approach to a model of Jesuit Transnational Networking.
My interest is to find which types of structures help the Society of Jesus to
develop its public mission in our global context. What makes JRS a successful apostolic
structure for our times, and how can Jesuits learn in order to develop new global
apostolic initiatives?
3.1 A Framework for Transnational Religious Institutions
It is well known that globalization processes are changing world politics, and that
there is a growing importance of transnational networks in the new global multilateral
relationship among international actors in which states are an important part, but not the
only one. Since 1970 non-state actors such as transnational corporations and international
organizations grew to become too politically and economically important to be ignored.
59
In this interdependent world, every decision has repercussions beyond national
boundaries, and the international system is now seen as a mixture of such areas as trade,
finance, energy, human rights, democracy — where domestic and international policy
processes merged.300 Global interdependency grows and decision-making procedures are
understood as processes of negotiation and consensus seeking among state and non-state
actors. Transnationality has become a key feature because world politics has been
transformed “into a global politics of agenda setting, coalition building and multilateral
regulation.”301 This is the context to understand the importance of the international nongovernmental organizations and the growing role they have as maximum representatives
of the so-called transnational civil society.302 The primacy of the state in international
politics is strongly challenged for what Ferris called the “blossoming of Civil
Society.”303 The rise of new technologies, the increasing pressure of non-governmental
actors, the experience of transnational collective actions, and the density and complexity
of international linkages are variables that make this moment perfect for the development
of new forms of transnational nongovernmental agents that are more effective and
possess real influence.304 The sum of these transnational interactions is a set of networks
which “cut across national societies developing linkages between groups in different
nations.”305 In this interconnected arena the connections, the capacity of influence, the
networking, and the alliances are even more important.
A considerable number of the organizations in this new transnational civil society
are actually religious organizations,306 confirming again Casanova’s affirmation that
300
Jeff Haynes, “Transnational religious actors and international politics” in Third World
Quarterly, vol. 22, nº 2, 2001, 145.
301
Karen Mundy and Lynn Murphy, “Transnational Advocacy, Global Civil Society?” in
Comparative Education Review, vol. 45, nº 1, 2001, 88.
302
Unlike domestic civil society, transnational civic society is not territorially fixed. Haynes,
Op.Cit. 146.
303
She refers to a growing from 6.000 International NGOs in 1990 to 26.000 in 2003. Elizabeth
Ferris, “The Role of NGOs in the International Refugee Regime”, in Niklaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, and
Gil Loescher (Ed), Problems of Protection. The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights (New York: Taylor
& Francis Books, 2003) 121.
304
Mundy and Murphy, Op.Cit. 88.
305
Haynes, Op.Cit. 146.
306
Based on statistics on UN, Julia Berger has analyzed this sector and confirms that the 12,6%
and the 8,5% of the NGOs associated with ECOSOC and DPI are religious non-governmental
organizations (RNGO). The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the Department of Public
Information (DPI) are the UN bodies associated with the largest number of NGOs. Julia Berger, “Religious
Nongovernmental Organizations: an Exploratory Analysis” in Voluntas, vol 14, March 2003, 21.
60
religious institutions are coming to have an important public role that does not match the
theoretical analysis of secularization scholars. The challenge here is to understand the
role of these religious communities and institutions in the global arena and to find a
framework to systematize it. I am going to follow the proposal of Bryan Hehir, 307 based
on Ivan Vallier,308 that affirms that we can analyze religion as a transnational force in
world politics, and the new transnational civil society will give us the framework for
understanding the new roles of Church’s institutions.
Following Hehir the characteristics of the transnational actors are that they: (1)
are based in one place; (2) are present in several places; (3) have a trained corps of
personnel; (4) follow a single guiding philosophy; (5) have a sophisticated
communication system; (6) perform specialized functions, and (7) do it across one or
more international boundaries.309 The Catholic Church and Catholic religious
organizations meet all the requirements to be considered transnational actors. The author
has written in several places that this category includes corporations from IBM to the
Society of Jesus. This is the framework in which I am going to locate the role of religious
actors in the international stage.
In the previous chapter I already mentioned the “voluntary disestablishment” of
the Church around Vatican II. Talking about this process, Vallier recognized systemic
trends going on in the Catholic Church during the last century: (1) its more integrated
and international organization, (2) greater dependence on spiritual and moral leadership
instead of political strength, and (3) less emphasis on confessional expansion.310 A new
global identity, certainly transnational, comes to replace the traditional national church.
What was a genial idea in 1970 today is generally recognized:311 churches are relevant
actors “working internationally, bound together by shared values, common discourse and
307
Bryan Hehir, “Overview,” in Religion in World Affairs, the findings of a conference organized
by the DACOR Bacon House Foundation, October 6, 1995, 11-19.
308
Hehir criticizes Vallier because he did not include Vatican II adequately. Other critique resides
in the vision of a monolithic church in which the centre directed the periphery. For Hehir, this is an overly
simple idea of the institutional structure of Catholicism. Bryan Hehir, “Overview”, 17-18.
309
Hehir, “Overview,” 5 and also in Samuel P. Huntington, “Transnational Organizations in Wold
Politics” World Politics, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Apr., 1973), 333.
310
Ivan Vallier, “The Roman Catholic Church: A Transnational Actor” in International
Organization, Vol. 25, No. 3, Transnational Relations and World Politics. (Summer, 1971), pp. 498.
311
In my analysis: first Vallier, then Casanova, Beyer, Robertson, Schreiter, Hehir, and now
Margaret E. Keck, Ferris, and Berger.
61
dense exchanges of information and services.”312 These are what the scholars call the
transnational religious institutions.
I have developed already the new way of understanding the public mission of the
Church in terms of social justice, and the key importance of the transnationality and the
international level for the Church’s mission for global times. My point here is that these
faith-based transnational organizations are the new agents of this long tradition of
Christian individuals and faith communities providing assistance to those in need. What
started with the monasteries, the mendicant orders, the nursing orders, and was followed
by the mission societies,313 today is embodied in the transnational religious institutions
and their proposal of global solidarity and integral development. This is the context to
understand this hybrid of religious belief and social activism focused in an explicit public
mission.
Given the new concept of mission and the new emphasis on the global identity
and transnationality of the Church, there are many different forms of embodiment for this
new task of international building of justice:314 religious organizations, Catholic NGOs,
advocacy networks, missionary organizations, charitable institutions, socio-political
organizations, lobbies and pressure groups, and even radical organizations. All these
faith-based organizations have one or more of the following: (1) affiliation with a
religious body; (2) a mission statement with explicit reference to religious values; (3)
financial support from religious sources; (4) a governance structure where selection of
board members or staff is based on religious beliefs or affiliation, and (5) decisionmaking processes based on religious values.315 My goal is to use this framework to study
JRS as an agent of the Church’s social mission in a global world. JRS fulfils all the
requirements to be considered as a transnational faith-based organization, and the
theoretical models of these institutions will give me some perspective to highlight the
key features of my case study.
312
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryin Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998) 2.
313
Elisabeth Ferris, “Faith Based and Secular Humanitarian Organizations” in International
Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 87, nº 858, June 2005, 313.
314
Gerard Clarke, “Faith Matters: Development and the Complex World of Faith-Based
Organization” in Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, nº 1, 2007, 90.
315
Ferris, “Faith-based…”, 312.
62
3.2 JRS as a Model for Jesuit Transnationality
It is again Berger who stated that many of these transnational religious
institutions represent new incarnations of previously established religious organizations.
Her study covered Roman Catholic religious orders such as the Order of Discalced
Carmelites, the Order of St. Augustine, and the Knights of Columbus.316 Regarding the
Society of Jesus, JRS is the veteran in this field. It is not just an international work, but
as I have demonstrated, is the first global apostolic response of the Society, full of
insights regarding a global transnational apostolic body, and the consequence of an
international networking on refugee issues, both within the Society and outside. There
are a numerous examples of networking in the Society of Jesus but what has been a
constant in my research is the reference to JRS as the best example of a new apostolic
model based on networking. This is the reason why I am now going to analyze JRS as a
model of an institution using the potentiality of Jesuit transnationality. I am going to
consider already demonstrated that (1) Fr. Arrupe articulated the concepts of network,
information management, international coordination, and analysis and advocacy as
central elements in the life of JRS since its beginning,317 and (2) JRS’ mission is
“intimately connected” with the mission of the Society of Jesus to serve faith and
promote the justice of God’s Kingdom in dialogue with cultures and religions.318
All the previous work allows us to focus now on the organizational aspects of
JRS, trying to learn from this successful institution how the Jesuits can develop
transnational apostolic initiatives. I’m going to research first how JRS developed in time,
and then detect the main tensions or dilemmas of this experience.319 My intention is to
understand what is exactly the organizational strength of JRS and what we can learn
about how the Society can develop similar initiatives in the future, that is, what makes
the Society of Jesus suitable for these types of structures, to build up the foundations for
316
Berger, Op.Cit., 28.
See “The Foundational Moment,” section 1.5 of this thesis.
318
See “JRS and Jesuit Mission,” section 2.4 of this thesis.
319
It is not easy to systematize such an approach in a field that is clearly understudied. For this I
have been looking for theoretical references and I will use three models of analysis. (1) The framework for
analysis of Religious Nongovernmental Organizations developed by Julia Berger, (2) a model for
institutional development in global NGOs created by Linbert and Bryan, (3) a model of functional analysis
of networks developed by Enrique Mendizábal, and (4) a model of Transnational Advocacy Networks
developed by Keck and Sikkink.
317
63
the proposal of the last chapter.
3.3.1 JRS Institutional development
Twenty-eight years have passed since JRS’s foundational moment and it can be
considered a very young institution within a Society of Jesus with more than 450 years of
history. Perhaps this is the reason that there are no studies about the institutional
development of the first Jesuit institution operating on a global scale. In this section I am
going to offer the results of my research in an attempt to clarify structure and classify
what I think are the key stages in the institutional evolution of this intuition of Arrupe. I
have established each phase following the different international directors, and
highlighting the main organizational steps of that period. The proposed institutional
itinerary of JRS started as (1) an umbrella coordination within the Social Justice
Secretariat. Then it become (2) a differentiated institution, light weight and
decentralized. Always answering the needs of the refugees and emerging crises, JRS
proceeded to (3) build up the regions and first structures. Finally, as a mature institution
with adequate expertise and know-how, JRS (4) settled into what could be called a
Global Identity and structures.320
3.3.1.1 Umbrella Coordination (1980-1984) M. Campbell Johnston
After its charismatic beginning,321 Arrupe made a personal follow-up of the initial
steps of JRS to the point that Michael Campbell Johnston confirms he conducted weekly
meetings with Father General to personally check the performance of the new apostolic
venture.322 As part of the Social Justice Secretariat in Rome, during the first four years,
JRS was an umbrella coordination323 of the refugee works that were already going on in
320
Enrique Mendizábal establishes four stages for the institutional development of a network:
forming, organizing, formalizing, and institutionalizing relationships. The four periods fit perfectly with
the four steps I’m proposing as institutional stages of JRS development. Enrique Mendizábal, “What are
networks made of?” Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2005, available at
http://www.odi.org.uk/RAPID/Projects/PPA0103/docs/Understanding_networks_form, 10.
321
See “The Foundational Moment,” section 1.5 of this thesis.
322
Dieter B. Scholz, Evaluation of the Jesuit Refugee Service, JRS Internal document, 31 January,
1984, p.2.
323
An umbrella coordination is an organizational distribution in which a group of basically
independent nodes are lightly linked to a coordinating mechanism for sharing information and facilitating
cooperation. All the nodes that fall under the scope of the “umbrella” benefits of the sharing and
cooperation facilities, but there are no strong bonds or further institutional structures.
64
the worldwide Society, mostly focused in East Asia, Africa and Latin America.324 The
initial JRS was a loosely organized structure with the main purpose of networking people
and mobilizing resources.
Soon JRS personnel realized that the “switchboard” function that Arrupe required
could not be restricted merely to matching supply and demand of personnel. Major
decisions were involved often: sending a Jesuit to a country where there are no Jesuits
and responding to a request for Jesuits from a Bishop, engaging non-Jesuit personnel
working as members of the JRS teams, planning long-term goals resulting from the
presence of Jesuits in certain refugee situations, etc.325 In 1984 it was proposed that JRS
be established as a “stand-alone” secretariat within the curia, independent from the
Social Justice Secretariat, and the coordinator be responsible to one of the General
Assistants. Also there was a request for a second full-time Jesuit to help JRS field
personnel.326
3.3.1.2 Light and Decentralized Institution (1984-1990) D. Scholz
Dieter Scholz was the first international director of JRS as a work separated from
the Social Justice Secretariat. That was a six-year long period in which JRS became a
light and decentralized institution. During that time the main work was to coordinate a
network of individuals embedded in other organizations. “Very quickly we took an
identity, but often we made an agreement, we were JRS people working with other
agencies.”327 JRS did not have projects of its own, but worked under national
organizations such as the Catholic Church in Thailand, the Malaysian Red Crescent
Society,328 or other agencies like the Lutheran World Federation. Members of JRS were
at camps in South Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia
324
In the initial meeting with Arrupe the main Jesuit initiatives with refugees were examined. It
was a considerable work already going on in East Asia (Vietnamese and East Timor refugees), India
(Pakistan refugees, involvement in Thailand), USA (Universities collaboration with field work at refugee
camps, communities helping in the resettlement in the States), and Africa (Zimbawe, Chad and Ethiopia)
Promotio Iustitiae 19 (1980): 161-162. In Latin America the involvement started at the same time that JRS
was born, with the beginning of the Salvadorian civil war in the early 80’s.
325
Dieter B. Scholz, First Annual Review of the Jesuit Refugee Service (1981-1982), JRS Internal
Document, 14 September 1982, 3.
326
Scholz, Evaluation, 5-6.
327
He was talking about the work in Thailand in 1985, where he started as JRS Regional director.
Mark Raper, Personal Interview, 25 February 2008.
328
Amaya Valcárcel (Ed), The Wound of the Border: 25 Years with Refugees, (Rome: JRS
International, 2005): 265.
65
and the Philippines.329 In this early period, JRS East Asia was created as a region. Other
hotspots of this moment were the horn of Africa and El Salvador. The structure was a
small international office and few and very small regional offices330 with minimal
administrative costs and procedures. “At that time the identity of JRS was based on the
foundational letter of Arrupe and the sense of belonging to the Society of Jesus, which
infrastructure was being used if it was present in the area.”331 In Ethiopia and Vietnam
the first projects “owned” by JRS were started.332
3.3.1.3 Building up Regions and 1st Structures (1990-2000) M. Raper
In 1990 Mark Raper become the second JRS international director and it was a
time of definitive institutionalization. “In that period people were getting impatient about
what type of structure we were going to have. Only as we consolidated was when it
started to clarify.”333 From 1990 to 2000 JRS faced the building up of the regions and the
first structures.
After an early settlement in Nairobi, in 1981, there was no further institutional
movement in Africa until 1990. Until that moment, “more than countries or regions there
were projects.”334 However, it was during this period that Eastern Africa became a JRS
region and Grand Lacs followed the same path in the aftermath of the Rwandan
genocide. The Southern Africa region was formed at that time as well. In Latin America,
JRS was already working in El Salvador, but this was the time of the start of work with
Guatemalan refugees in Mexico and the works with IDPs from Colombia and Haiti. In
1995 JRS Latin America had its first regional meeting. JRS was already working in
Europe informally with liaisons with the different refugee works in each of the
provinces. It is in this period, exactly in 1994, when JRS Europe become a region and
opened an office in Brussels. Also in the mid-1990s JRS began its work in North
329
Vella, Everybody, 58-60.
In the 80s a coordinating centre for African initiatives was started in Nairobi, and soon
afterwards another in Bangkok for the Asian region. Valcárcel, Wounded, 11.
331
Luis Magriñá, Personal Interview, 3 March 2008.
332
In the early 1980s, JRS launched a project to help Tigrayan and Eritrean people displaced by
war and famine in north-eastern Ethiopia. Valcárcel, Wounded, 11.
333
Raper, Personal Interview.
334
Magriñá, Personal Interview.
330
66
America with legal assistance for refugees and the important work of advocacy in
Washington, DC.
Father Kolvenbach pushed for a wider involvement in reflection and research,
along with a clearer apostolic commitment of the whole Society. GC 34 stated that JRS
was an official part of the Jesuit mission. That was also the time for the establishment of
the JRS council and a group of regional directors in an attempt at institutional structure
reinforcement.335 “Our strategy was to bring people together, developing cross region
training programs and starting the annual international meetings.”336
In 1996 Fr. Rick Ryscavage implemented a Communication Audit as part of the
corporative identity that JRS was trying to improve. “Then we got the logo, the slogan…
things that gave us cohesion.”337 There was a clear need to centralize the identity, the
procedures, the way JRS presented itself and talked with other agencies, helping
everybody, even the JRS staff, to understand the institution. This is the period when
Oxford University extended an invitation to JRS and started the Arrupe Tutor as part of a
Refugee Studies Program in order to promote research on refugees. The changing face of
the refugee problem led JRS to extend its mandate to include internally displaced people
(IDPs) and urban refugees. As part of this process of structuring the institution, in 1998
Mark Raper asked the Craighead Institute338 for a study of JRS organizational
development whose major outcome was to determine that there was a clear need to
structure processes, and to develop some procedural manuals.
The Charter and the Guidelines, trying to articulate the JRS mission, were written
in the final years of this stage. “At that moment there were no procedures, it was the
moment to define strategies and write documents.”339 It was also time for the
establishment of the juridical status of JRS as a work of the Society both under canon
law and also under civil law.340 At the end of this period, advocacy work was being
developed in Brussels, Geneva, and Washington, DC.
335
Joseph Sugrañes, Personal Interview, 22 February 2008.
Raper, Personal Interview.
337
Ibid.
338
Christine Anderson and Dr. John Raferty “Strategic Approaches to the Organizational
development of Jesuit Refugee Service”, JRS Internal Document, August 1998.
339
Magriñá, Personal Interview.
340
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, “20 Years of JRS, Letter to the Whole Society on 4 March 2000” in
Vella, Everybody, 11.
336
67
3.3.1.4 Global Identity and Structures (2000-2007) L. Magriñá
Mark Raper recognized that “we started systematizing but we didn’t really get
them in place. We needed another kind of leadership for that. The profile was for
someone with skills and experience to run a big organization.”341 Luis Magriñá, already
involved in the process of writing the documents and determining the official status of
JRS, became international director in 2000. With him started the development of a global
identity and structures. In this period, says Balleis, “we managed to shape the spirit of
JRS with the necessary body.”342 This period of seven years was the time for the
explosion in numbers: JRS grew by 300% in 7 years.343 It was time for consolidation of
practices and official recognition. It was time for the structuring of the international
office and the development of similar structures in the regional offices. This meant the
segmentation of the work, the specialization of the areas (programs, finances,
communication, advocacy, and human resources), along with a major effort in formation
of the staff. Especially important has been the emphasis on research and advocacy
work.344 The main outcome of this period was the first global strategic plan and regional
strategic plans. For the first time these types of plans included exit strategies integrating
JRS projects into Jesuit local initiatives or self-maintained structures. With this new
dimension of the structure, issues about identity, the ownership and participation of
Jesuits, and especially human resources have become main concerns in recent years. The
concern about capitalizing on Jesuit expertise is clear in the emphasis on the educational
sector that leads the last global strategy of the organization.
“On 19 March 2000 JRS was given a juridical personality as a pious, autonomous foundation in
accord with Canon Law, and recognized by the Vatican.” Footnote #2 in JRS Guidelines.
Urbano Valero was the responsible of the work on the constitutions and documents of the newly
approved foundation through which the Vatican recognized JRS, and then by the Italian government, that
finally meant a European civil recognition.
341
Raper, Personal Interview.
342
Valcárcel, Op.Cit., 174.
343
JRS has multiplied by three the income/expenditures in 7 years, from 11,486,170 USD in 2000
to 33,353,785 USD in 2006. In this stage the staff grew from 400 full-time workers in 2000 to 1400 in
2007. Luis Magriña, “JRS 2000-2007. What have we done? Future Issues?” JRS Internal Document, 2007.
[Digital Presentation].
344
In 2002 Raúl González wrote an evaluation of the JRS advocacy work and made
recommendations on how to improve it. (See JRS International Strategic Advocacy Plan) During the
following years that recommendations were implemented and as a consequence JRS has an advocacy
officer in all regions, there is also an advocacy handbook, and the public impact of JRS has improved
considerably. Magriñá, JRS 2000-2007.
68
This evolution shows how JRS has evolved from an initial simple Jesuit network
to optimize the use of the Jesuit resources into a mature structured international
humanitarian organization recognized by the United Nations.345 The evolution, however,
has been neither clear nor accepted by all.
3.3.2 JRS Dilemmas
Since its beginning, JRS has been struggling with what I will call dilemmas,
proper to a pioneering structure within a classic religious order. This is an occasion to see
how this example of mission for global times attempted to be adapted and to adapt the
apostolic structure of the Society of Jesus.
3.3.2.1 Mandate Dilemma
JRS has not only grown in size and age, but also in the understanding of its
mission. The official documents show a development from the initial letter of Arrupe to
the current Guidelines and Charter. The explosion of the migratory problem, as well as
the Jesuit involvement in very different capacities and complexities, is asking JRS to
consider what is exactly its mission and what type of projects fall beyond its scope. What
started as an answer to the plight of the boat people and official refugees346 was extended
to internally displaced persons, individuals in detention centers, victims of natural
disasters, and vulnerable economic migrants.347 Despite the considerable number of
people on the move, the major focus of the JRS mission is the care of refugees or the
forcibly displaced, but for JRS this includes those forced to leave their country because
of deeply rooted economic failures and environmental problems.348
The task is overwhelming and the risk is to widen the mandate of JRS to the
extent of losing the quality of the service or even its priority for the most vulnerable
refugees or the ones who really are being persecuted or experience fear for their lives.
Another risk is the current priority for the advocacy work and the importance of raising
345
In 2002 JRS received special consultative status from the United Nations’ Committee on NonGovernmental Organizations. The status gives JRS the right to address the Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC), which deals with issues such as poverty, development, women, and refugees.
346
Following the 1951 definition of the UN Geneva Convention.
347
JRS, Reflections on the Mandate, Governance, and Jesuit Participation JRS Internal
Document (Rome: JRS International, 2007) 1.
348
JRS, Mandate, 2.
69
public awareness, which can lead to working far from refugees. Father Kolvenbach
understood perfectly the situation and the risks involved for the JRS mission,
encouraging constantly JRS to keep its work in the camps, with the most vulnerable
refugees.349
JRS needs to maintain its mandate and focus on those people in urgent and great
need of protection. It tries to keep clear its identity as an organization that cares for “de
facto”350 refugees. Most of the interviewed experts affirmed that the clear and narrowed
focus of JRS is part of the success of the institution. It allows mobility on the teams,
project replication, standardization of processes, and objective evaluation. As a way of
keeping the proper focus, the “Jesuit Migrant Service” 351 is a new initiative working for
those areas in which the migration problem is urgent and needs a Jesuit answer, without
involving JRS.
3.3.2.2 Institutional Dilemmas
During its institutional development, JRS has been trying to answer three
different questions regarding its own shape: (1) Should JRS be a “regular” Jesuit work or
should it be a special structure? (2) Should JRS grow as the task requires it to do or
should it keep relatively small as Arrupe envisioned? (3) Should JRS become a civilly
recognized agency or just a religious institution?
(1) Regular or extraordinary structure. I started the thesis by asking why Arrupe
created a new structure instead of responding to the refugee crisis merely through the
349
“JRS can provide so many different and important services, such as advocacy, but it is
essential that its service is carried out directly with refugees in camps, where their hope is under threat,”
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, JRS a Source of my Consolation – 16 January 2008 (Rome: JRS International
Office, forthcoming).
The “camp-like” condition refers to those people in urgent and great need of protection, those
most vulnerable, forgotten, invisible, poorest among poor whose lives are seriously threatened. These
forcedly displaced people are the focus of JRS mandate. JRS has to keep the name “refugee” in defense of
these forcedly displaces people whose rights to protection are eroded by calling them migrants. JRS, Our
way forward, 12.
350
That expression means refugees in the camps, IDPs, urban refugees and people in detention
due to persecution under violation of human rights and due to natural disasters. This term is used in The
JRS Charter: The mission given to JRS embraces all persons who are driven from their homes by conflict,
humanitarian (natural or human induced) disaster or violation of human rights, following Catholic social
teaching which applies the expression ‘de facto refugee’ to many related categories of people. See Vella,
Everybody, 15.
351
The Jesuit Migrant Service is working already in countries like Mexico, USA, Canada, and
Spain, as a way of answering the needs of the migrants without involving the refugee oriented structures.
70
regular structures of the Society. The answer was that there was a need for
supraprovincial coordination to answer globally a problem that is global in essence.352
Arrupe did not have confidence in the ability of the individual provinces to coordinate
efforts with others without a higher level of coordination. Kolvenbach gave the same
recommendation: “we should not simplify the organization letting the normal
government of the Society to handle this task.”353 The issues at stake here are the
autonomy of JRS and even its functionality. If it were left to the provinces, Kolvenbach
affirmed, “JRS would largely disappear.”354 It is clear that JRS needed an extraordinary
structure; but does this mean that the regular structures of the Society are not able to
undertake missions beyond provincial borders? This problem is what I will later address
as the governance dilemma.
(2) The size. Probably Arrupe did not think about the long-term scope of the
refugee problem, and over time JRS has had to face questions about its scope because of
the increasing magnitude of the problem. Kolvenbach has affirmed that JRS “must be big
if the problem and task is big.”355 What is important is that the administration should
always be as near as possible to the lives of the refuges. For Magriñá the key is that JRS
is oriented to the mission, so it should grow relative to the objective needs and the
quality of the service, not for the sake of corporate growth in and of itself. But, as Raper
says, “the structure can’t catch us.”356 JRS usually relies on larger agencies or networks
like Caritas or Cafod avoiding types of work that would require large infrastructures.
Kolvenbach affirmed that “the distinctive feature of JRS is your personal presence to the
refugees,”357 and this personal aspect should be reflected in the style of administration.
JRS does not aspire to be a large agency, and as far as it keeps offering its type of
accompaniment and maintains the strategic flexibility, size is not the criterion.
352
“Today many problems are global in nature and therefore require global solutions.” NC 396 §1
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, “Accompany, Serve, and Advocate Their Cause: The Mission and
Identity of JRS. Talk at the meeting of JRS Regional Directors on 23 June 1997,” JRS Internal Document,
3. (A reduced version of this important document is published in Vella, Everybody, 77-79).
354
Ibid
355
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 2.
356
Raper, Personal Interview.
357
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 2.
353
71
(3) Should JRS become an agency? From the beginning it was clear that JRS
didn’t want to become an agency,358 but to keep its identity as a Church institution and as
part of the apostolic mission of the Society. Kolvenbach however was clear about this:
JRS operates as an agency to give greater effectiveness to its activities. He simplified the
problem, arguing that as an apostolic instrument359 the agency structure is needed to offer
the services that JRS should offer: enter into some countries, work in the camps under
UN coordination, or simply cooperate with other groups. There is no reason to
deaccentuate the agency profile, especially since this will not cause the loss of JRS’ faith
identity.360 Since the beginning JRS has been working with the credentials of a civil
organization when it is needed: “We got the Belgium recognition pretty soon, so in
Tanzania, or Cambodia, when we need to demonstrate that we were an international
organization, we used the Belgium recognition.”361 After this came the Vatican
recognition, and finally the ECOSOC qualification.362 The service to the refugees is a
choice to “offer inclusive, generous, personal, and gratuitous care, without political or
material interest.”363 Everything that helps in this sense should be welcomed, in the line
of JRS principles, and therefore part of the mission of the Society. Sometimes workpermits in countries and in refugee camps are easier as NGO and under UN coordination,
in other cases as part of the Church.364 Chapter II already explained how a institution like
this can be considered part of the apostolic body of the Society.365 The criterion is the
greater service of refugees; this is really where the JRS identity is at stake.
JRS is an extraordinary apostolic structure of the Society of Jesus whose scope
should allow it to be flexible and dynamic, with a civil recognition as an agency to
facilitate the work. The next question is where this structure should be located within the
358
Michael Campbell-Johnston, “What don Pedro Had in Mind When He Invited the Society to
Work With Refugees?” in Vella, Everybody, 44.
359
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 3.
360
Ibid.
361
Raper, Personal Interview.
362
JRS is an international Catholic organization registered as a Vatican based international
foundation and also is registered and operates in many countries as an international NGO. In 2002, as has
been stated before, JRS received the ECOSOC recognition.
363
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 3.
364
JRS International, Our Way Forward in the Context of the GC35 (Rome: JRS International
Document, forthcoming) 6.
365
See “JRS and Jesuit Mission,” section 2.4 of this thesis.
72
Society of Jesus. In the next section I will show how being an extraordinary structure is a
constant source of tension for JRS.
3.3.2.3 Governance Dilemma
One of the problems that appeared in the early documents of JRS is the relative
isolation of the JRS office within the curia366 and the effects this had on the JRS
mission.367 As was said, the lines of communication and decision making soon developed
from the coordinator directly to Father Arrupe, who would frequently call for direct brief
verbal progress reports and indicate how he wanted JRS to grow. In the administration of
Father Dezza, Father Calvez followed this.368 Following this start JRS wanted to be
directly linked to the central governance, inserted into existing structures of the Society,
not an independent institution that would be more professional and mobile, but it would
not be an “apostolate for the whole society.”369 The problem with introducing an
international structure working at a local level is its compatibility with the regular
structures of the Society at provincial and regional levels. This is why JRS has two
different organizational models: (a) an organized international apostolate, and (b) a
network of autonomous projects undertaken by provinces and assistancies. This double
structure is already expressed in JRS guidelines. The dilemma is: should JRS be
centralized in the international office or should it be left to the ordinary governance of
the assistancies and provinces?
(1) Bangkok or Colombia models.
This double structure already appears in the early documents, sometimes
expressed in the opposition between the Bangkok and the Colombian models, referring
to the first offices that followed each one of these patterns. The establishment of JRS in
366
Scholz, Evaluation, 5.
Campbell Johnston was concern about how the position of the JRS as an extension of the
Social Secretariat was leading to increasing isolation within the curia. Scholz, Evaluation, 2.
368
Scholz, Evaluation, 2.
369
“Our service to refugees is an apostolic commitment of the whole Society.” Peter Hans
Kolvenbach, “Review of the JRS, letter to the whole Society, 14 February 1990.” In Vella, Everybody, 51.
JRS has had possibilities of moving into independent buildings and better installations but the
option always has been to maintain its privileged place close to the General in the central office within the
General Curia at Rome. “The Society has a house across the Palatino and Kolvenbach offered us it for
settling our central Office, but we decide to remain in the curia, a visible link with the General its very
important for JRS.” JRS has no plan of diminishing its Jesuit link at all, even accepting the cost of slow
growth and a certain measure of ineffectiveness. Raper, Personal Interview.
367
73
Thailand set the standards of what is called the “Bangkok model,” proper for “areas of
acute or pressing refugee need, or where the local Jesuit Province […] cannot offer
service to the refugees,”370 where JRS acts as an independent body of the Society
coordinated directly from Rome. On the other hand, a strong presence of the Society in
Colombia and the multiple initiatives launched before JRS started to work defined the
second model of action. The “Colombian model” is proper for areas where “the needs are
not so overwhelming, or when the Province or Assistancy has the resources to undertake
programs of service.”371 In these cases JRS becomes a local project under the umbrella of
the assistancy, having more independence372 but still being supported by the central JRS
office. The Americas and Europe follow the Colombian model, while the two regions in
Asia and the four regions in Africa fit into the Bangkok pattern.
For some the more “pure” JRS vocation is to be specialized so as to be a rapid
response for crises where local capacity is not built up sufficiently. This structure allows
JRS to work in countries where there are needs and no Jesuits present (Cambodia,
Liberia, Guinea, Namibia, Afghanistan). 373 That means that the supporters of Arrupe’s
initial intuition, based on the global vision and flexibility of the structure, consider the
Colombian model as a too institutionalized version of JRS. The experience of 28 years of
work, however, is teaching JRS about the need for local Jesuit presence and a better
synergy with local works, which means necessarily a better fit374 in the local structures of
the Society of Jesus. The difficulty in engaging fruitfully is great where there is no link
with a local community and no deep knowledge of the local customs, aspects fully
provided by a previous Jesuit infrastructure.375 On this regard, Father Kolvenbach has
stated, “as far as it is urgent, it is better to be centralized, afterwards, decentralization can
370
JRS Guidelines #19.
JRS Guidelines #20.
372
The regional director is named by the president of the conference (with possibility of veto from
international director).
373
JRS, Mandate, 5.
374
The frictions and lack of communication between JRS international organization and local
Jesuit structures is a constant source of problems. This is explicit, for example, in critical moments as the
nomination of regional directors in a “Bangkok model,” in which the local Society of Jesus has merely a
consultant role.
375
For example JRS never managed to engage fruitfully with West Papuans in New Guinea, or
with Filipinos displaced by the civil conflicts in the Philippines because the lack of a local link. To form an
effective JRS team is often difficult without a local community base, knowledge of local customs, or a
Jesuit province working on the place. Valcárcel, Wound, 16.
371
74
begin.”376 Luis Magriñá, after his years of experience leading JRS internationally, thinks
that the logical development of the regions should be to progressively turn into works
under the Jesuit assistancy umbrella. For Magriñá, as far as Jesuit conferences become
stronger and the Society is really present in the area, JRS would leave the “emergency
mode” into a more institutional presence within the local Society of Jesus. Then, the role
of the international office would be “to assure the identity of the institution with a name,
a logo, a way of proceeding.”377 The international director can offer an international
representation and a Jesuit leadership depending on Father General, decentralized into
regions but with authority to veto the nominations of regional director. This level of
governance would be responsible in working out guidelines, general policies, global
analysis, and developing research and strategic plans. Magriñá is in favour of
decentralization, but with a strong coordination to enable common guidelines.378 The
people from the Craighead Institute confirmed this federative direction in 1998 and the
strategic planning developed in 2005-06 is also on the same track.379
How to deal with this tension about the need of local rootedness without being
isolated from the universal body of the Society, which is the source of its strong global
potential? How to think globally but to act as a function of a particular place, of local
realities? The organizational and apostolic structures of the Society should flow from this
inherent tension of every transnational corporation in a global world. The governance
dilemma points exactly to the difficulty of responding to this constantly unsolved
tension. As I will demonstrate later GC 35 is trying to adapt the Jesuit structures of
376
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 4.
Luis Magriñá, Personal Interview.
378
Ibid.
379
In 1998 people from the Craighead Institute confirmed this tendency after a study of JRS
organizational development. Again, the emphasis was on the need for an organizational capacity to work
on an international strategy but with freedom at a local level. This report is clear in the strong need for
localizing (making local) the processes in an organization in which the local factors are so striking
(political struggles, staff working in extreme circumstances, chaotic systems at work, powerful and
changing cultural contexts). In this “process strategy” the international office manages the strategy
formation while the detailed content appropriate to the context is decided at the regional and country
levels. (Anderson and Raferty, Op.Cit., 5.) In this model the International Director is then concerned
primarily with the design of organizational structure, key staffing, and corporate level policy, such as the
charter, the mission, and the guidelines. This is what JRS is developing through the strategic planning
process developed in 2005-06. This dynamic has generated nine international strategic issues to implement
through 2010, involving the regional level in each of the steps. (See JRS International Office, International
Strategic Issues 2006-2010 (Rome: JRS International Office, 2006)
377
75
governance for a better embodiment of a universal mission. JRS was just the first
example of the need for strong intermediary structures.
3.3.3 Implications
The greatest implications of these dilemmas for my study on Jesuit
transnationality are the links between the mission and the structure. These pages confirm
that the scope and the focus of the mission are key aspects in order to define the
structure: (1) sometimes the regular structures of the Society of Jesus are not enough to
undertake missions of a global scope, that means that there is a relation between the
scope of the mission and the governance structure capable to address it; (2) different
types of focus require different types of institutional structures, so there is a relation
between the task and the type of network.
(1) The institutional development of JRS showed that the initial networked idea
of Arrupe was not enough to undertake the vast dimensions of the JRS mission. The
regular Jesuit infrastructure was not able to answer the needs of a supra-provincial
apostolic initiative and JRS had to develop a parallel international infrastructure.380 Was
it because of the lack of local Jesuit infrastructures or should I deduce that a supraprovincial mission needed supra-provincial structures of agency? Are the difficulties
with the Jesuit structure the origin of this need for autonomy and operational
independency, or is the natural dynamic of a network within the Society to settle into an
institutionalized international entity easy to understand and to assimilate in the regular
structures of an organic body? The answer to these questions should be located in the
middle structures of governance, regions and conferences of provincials that offer supraprovincial instances of coordination and new channels for a mission that cannot be
administered by individual provinces. Kolvenbach has pointed to these structures as the
place for the tension between a globalized mission and local realities.381 Structures like
JRS with a mission with a supra-provincial scope, find in these regional structures the
380
See the first stage of the JRS institutional development: “Umbrella Coordination”, section
3.3.1.1 of this thesis.
381
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, "Corresponsible in service of Christ’s mission," Opening talk of
Father General in the Loyola 2000 meeting of provincials, September 22, 2000.
76
way of working close to the local without losing their explicit link with the central
government.
JRS evolved from a weak umbrella coordination of individuals to an international
federation of JRS regions with a strong, charismatic international office. The prevailing
tendency as it has developed has been to replicate the structures strengthening the
regions in a decentralizing tendency that has allowed an impressive institutional growth
in the last decade. As a mission-oriented structure, for Magriñá the solution for the
governance dilemma is to accept that as long as the local Jesuit structure is capable of
developing the mission of the network, the decentralization is recommended.382 The
advantages of independent regions, even in competition for funds, are flexibility, speed,
and a strong national/regional identity suitable for fundraising and for the proper
inculturation of projects. The concept of authority in the Society and the Ignatian way of
governance would recommend this type of decentralized network, in which the decisions
take place at the level closer to those immediately affected.383 My suggestion is that the
criterion is the local capability to develop the mission using the full potentialities of the
structure. That is to affirm global subsidiarity as the organizing principle for Jesuit
networking:384 If the intermediary level of governance can guarantee the priority of the
global mission and the complexity of the needed approach385 there is no reason
centralize. It is true that the central government should have a role as source of unity in
the universal body, but it is important to remember that the new type of networks “should
come from all levels of the Society.”386
382
Thinking about the degree of centralization, and attending to the theory, it is obvious what has
been stated: the weaker the local, the more centralized. Enrique Mendizábal, “Understanding Networks,”
Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2006, 3. Available at
http://www.odi.org.uk/publications/working_papers/wp271.pdf.
383
What Kolvenbach called the “Jesuit form of governance” (Kolvenbach, Accompany, 4) is a key
to retain in the JRS way of proceeding. He refers to a personalized management style based on flexibility
and the authority of some individuals. This can be understood as one of the potentialities of the Society for
flexibility and urgent response. JRS should not lose this.
384
Social Justice Secretariat (SJS), Guidelines for Networking in the Social Area, (Rome, 2003)
11.
385
Is the intermediary level of governance sufficiently strong to guarantee prioritizing the higher
mission in equal circumstances with the local claims? Is that enough to guarantee the interdisciplinary and
multitracking approach to the level that the objective of the network needs? Is that enough to guarantee the
use of global resources for advocacy and public impact required for the specific focus of the network?
386
GC 34, d21, 14 “Should come from all levels of the Society but the secretariats of the General
Curia must continue to play an important role in establishing them.”
77
(2) The lesson in terms of focus is that the specific institutional shape will depend
on the focus of the network. The analysis387 shows that to specify the pursued function is
basic in recommending certain types of structure, thus, the governance issue somehow
becomes a problem of apostolic priorities and institutional strategies. A more centralized
structure will be more efficient in the decision-making process and in resource
allocation. This is very good for an institution specialized in advocacy and relief, such as
the JRS Bangkok model. A more flexible and autonomous network of nodes is better for
institutions focused in social services and a more holistic attention to the beneficiaries,
such as what occurs in the Colombian model.388 If the stress is on global identity,
corporate image, and sense of belonging, an “inward looking network” with a strong
central hub389 and frequent interactions is what we need. If the accent is on amplifying
and filtering information and merely facilitating services, an “outward looking” network,
one with more ambiguous boundaries, would be better. This means that the double
structure of JRS is related to the fact that, while in Europe and America JRS works with
people in detention, urban refugees, and among the most vulnerable migrants,390 in other
parts of the world JRS is focused on relief work. The type of work is different, and
therefore so are the structural needs. In the first case the emphasis is in the local
infrastructure and the JRS network is a service provider one. In this decentralized model,
the dimension of relief agency does not appear as feasible. In this sense, in favour of the
second scheme, there are still dimensions like urgency, amount of resources, and even
special complexities like cultural or ethnic conflicts391 that recommend an external and
international intervention. The governance dilemma is not just an issue of local
capability but of focus and type of intervention.
JRS’s dilemmas as a new type of body within the Society speak about the need of
new types of structures to embody missions with a new focus, and especially with a new
387
Mendizábal has developed an interesting link between the expected function of the network
and its structure. Mendizábal, “What are networks made of?”
388
Berger, Op.Cit., 28.
389
Hub usually means center. In this thesis I am going to use the terminology from networks in
which a hub (also called concentrator) is a device for connecting multiple devices together making them
act as a single network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_hub).
390
JRS, Our way forward, 11.
391
JRS, Mandate, 5.
78
scope. In terms of focus, two factors become clear. First, as far as the work remains in
the camps, JRS keeps its pure international structure focused on relief. Second, when the
work is with urban refugees and detention centers in more settled contexts, JRS develops
its mission from an independent regional structure focused on the beneficiaries, closer to
the problem context, and more embedded in assistancy works. In terms of scope, JRS’s
decentralization is somehow linked with the growing role of the assistancies in the Jesuit
global governance system. The more the Jesuit regions are able to manage the common
mission, the easier it is for JRS to decentralize the work and rely on the “regular”
structures of the Society without losing links to the central government and therefore the
global mission.
Even though the link between mission and structure is evident, it is not clear to
me whether the final reasons to decentralize are (1) the circumstances of JRS’s initial
settlement in the region, (2) the strength (or weakness) of the local Jesuit structures, or
(3) the different types of work that JRS should build up in more developed environments.
In my research, the three variables seem to develop at the same time, defining the final
structure that JRS adopts in every region.
3.3.4 JRS Jesuit Practices
The focus and scope of the mission are key variables for identifying apostolic
structures, but within the Society of Jesus there is another variable that also has an effect
in the type of structure and institutions: the Jesuit way of proceeding. Looking to JRS is
possible to discover some Jesuit practices that will hep to later define the features of the
Jesuit transnationality. Peter Balleis affirmed categorically “JRS is very Jesuit,”392 and
the question I have been trying to answer here is: what is Ignatian about JRS? That is to
say, what are the Ignatian roots in the JRS way of proceeding? In this sense there are
some features in JRS that caught my attention: (1) the flexible way of answering the
crisis, moving teams, opening and closing projects in a clear orientation to the mission;
(2) the option for a personal presence and accompaniment; and (3) the integrity of the
JRS interventions and the sense of mission lived in community.
392
Peter Balleis, “The Specific Jesuit Identity of JRS” in Vella, Everybody, 107.
79
(1) Flexibility and Adaptation. “JRS must be flexible.”393 The whole development
of JRS has been driven by the needs of displaced people. Mark Raper confesses, “The
response to each emergency gave us the profile to shape little by little our identity.”394
This is the reason why this institution is called to be flexible and open to new challenges.
This institutional dynamism has its roots in Ignatius’ criteria for discernment of the
apostolic works that constitute the JRS methodology for selecting projects.395 This is
why JRS ministries are multi-sectorial, match the overall Jesuit mission, and embody
such key qualities of Ignatian tradition as universality, mobility, and apostolic
availability.396 In this line, Magriñá insisted on the idea of opening and closing projects
or even regions as the needs of the refugees require: during his time the exit strategies
were incorporated into the strategic planning and, for example, one region was closed
(South East Europe was integrated into Europe) and another was created (West Africa).
JRS is a good example of the principle of accommodation that has characterized Jesuits
in their whole history: the institutional development attending to local needs, the double
governance structure, and the new emphasis on advocacy are also threads that speak of
this adapting and flexible feature of JRS as an institution. The deep foundation of this
flexibility and institutional “boldness” is the discernment, the confidence in God present
in the suffering realities of the world, in the midst of which JRS is constantly seeking to
discern God’s voice.397 “If we are indeed in the front line of a new apostolate in the
Society, we have to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit.”398 This flexibility and
adaptability does not mean necessarily mobility, but clear orientation towards the
mission. Magriñá affirms, “Not all Jesuit institutions should be mobile but should be
ready to be like this if the mission requires it.”
(2) Accompaniment.399 It is the hallmark of JRS. Our option for a personal style
of presence, says Magriñá, is something that is not so common in other agencies. “The
393
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 78.
Mark Raper, Personal Interview.
395
JRS Guidelines #4.
396
Vella, Everybody, 55.
397
“Discernment is a key element of Ignatian spirituality and thus of our methodology.” Mark
Raper, “Pastoral Accompaniment among refugees” in Vella, Everybody, 90.
398
Vella, Everybody, 37.
399
“This closeness to the people has given light and creativity to the apostolic services provided
by the Society of Jesus, the style of life and even the type of communities” Kike Figaredo, “First Refugees
in Cambodia” in Valcárcel, Wound, 22.
394
80
fact that JRS is present here,” said a refugee, “means that the world has not forgotten
us.”400 JRS’s faith-dimension implies an outlook which sees its mission as broader than
humanitarian concerns.401 Even when there are voices that argue that this is not a
guarantee of better services,402 the experience of JRS shows that religious organizations
are usually more closely tied to the community403 and more likely to remain when the
situation becomes dangerous.404 For JRS the option is to become companions of
refugees, to accompany them. This way of focusing its presences is how JRS expresses
the Jesuit faith in the dignity of every human being and embodies the love of God and
the care of God’s church for those whom others do not care about. “As companions of
Jesus we seek to accompany those whose company he also enjoys and seeks out.”405 JRS
gives priority to accompaniment and pastoral presences;406 its way of proceeding has
been called “a ministry of presence and sharing.”407 Kolvenbach was really concerned
about the need not to dilute Arrupe’s vision which was that the core of JRS is
accompaniment, being on the spot with refugees: “the test is the link with the
refugees.”408 His constant recommendation has been: “Stay in the camps!!” JRS can
provide so many different and important services, such as advocacy, but it is essential
that its service be carried out directly with refugees in camps, where their hope is under
400
Luis Magriñá, Interview for GC35 website, accessible at www.sjweb.info/35.
Elizabeth Ferris, “Faith-Based…”, 316.
402
Talking about the case of faith-based schools, the authors affirm that there is no systematic
evidence in support that professionals who see their labors as part of a divine calling perform better than
people who merely work for a salary. Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, “Can the Churches Save the
Cities?” in The American Prospect, vol.35, November-December 1997, 50.
403
Agbonkhianmenghe E. Orobator, “Key Ethical Issues in the Practices and Policies of RefugeeServing NGOs and Churches” in David Hollenbach, ed., Advocating Refugee Rights (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University press, forthcoming) 5.
“Faith based organizations like JRS, TCDS, and LWF, are more likely to focus on the needs of
forgotten populations” Agbonkhianmenghe E. Orobator, Op.Cit. 32.
404
In 2005, during the elections in Liberia, all the international staff or humanitarian organizations
were gathered in Monrovia as a security measure in case a new conflict starts. At least in the northern part,
where I was working, only the JRS staff remained there during those key days.
“When shells were fired at the camps on the Cambodian-Thai border all foreigners were ordered
to leave the camps. The leader of the Catholic Relief organization explained to the authorities that this was
the time when refugees needed them most and that the priests had made the choice to stay in the camp
during the attacks whatever the consequences would be” Jan Stuyt, “Mission and Community Life in JRS”
in John W. O’Malley [et al.], Ignatian spirituality and mission / The Way supplement, 1994/79. London:
The Way Publications, 1994. 16.
405
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 1.
406
JRS Guidelines #5
407
Vella, Everybody, 32.
408
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 5.
401
81
threat.409 JRS service is “direct, pastoral, human and exposed.”410 The specific jobs are
undertaken to the extent that they enable a pastoral presence to the refugees. The goal is
to accompany, more than to evangelize: “Our pastoral responsibility to all sometimes
contrasts with the narrow loyalties or expectations of denominationalism in others.”411
(3) “Faith that does justice” approach. As part of the apostolic body of the
Society of Jesus, JRS develops a faith-based approach in which the deep personal love
for Christ shapes the solidarity with the poor. As the Pope said in his recent discourse to
GC 35, the Jesuit work with refugees is an option for the poorest among the poor, and
this option “is not ideological, but is born from the Gospel.”412 Many JRS workers are
witnesses of this. In the 25th anniversary of JRS a book413 was published witnessing this
feature, how JRS work can be a sign of God’s love in exile. This, the Jesuit mission
understood as faith that does justice, does not allow every mode of presence and acting.
It has two important consequences: (a) the clear ethical framework and the imperative of
justice do not allow passivity but protection and denunciation, that makes JRS take clear
positions in terms of denouncing injustices and human rights violations. The Ignatian
magis is at play here regarding the use of all means, influence, using the whole structure
of the Society, going as far as is possible, including advocacy as a key element of JRS
mission.414 (b) As a consequence of the spiritual nature of the commitment comes the
wholeness of the option, the integral approach that characterizes JRS including the
community life of teams,415 and life-style: “Our value system and lifestyle is different
409
Kolvenbach, A Source of my Consolation.
Quentin Dignam, Some Reflections on the Experience of Jesuit Refugee Service, November
1990, JRS Internal Document, 2.
411
Dignam, Op.Cit., 1.
412
Address of His Holiness Benedict the Sixteenth to the 35th General Congregation of the Society
of Jesus. 21 February 2008.
413
In 1997 the communication audit revealed a strong claim from JRS staff for greater emphasis
on and definition of aspects of the faith, the cornerstone on which JRS is built. The book God in Exile:
Towards a Shared Spirituality with Refugees evolved precisely as a response to this need. Peter Hans
Kolvenbach, “Introduction” in JRS, God in Exile: Towards a Shared Spirituality with Refugees (Rome:
JRS, 2005) 10.
414
JRS Guidelines #7.
415
Part of the expected qualities of a candidate for JRS, is the “ability to life in community.” Jan
Stuyt, a veteran JRS member with experience in different Asian countries, the Balkans, and the regional
office on Europe stated that “we realize that our long-term effectiveness as an apostolic community
depends upon the quality of our life together. Our choices to live together closely, to have meals together,
to share prayer, to make decisions as a group, are all beneficial for the work.” Stuyt, Op.Cit., 18.
410
82
from that of professionals. From our poverty we were powerful and able to give the
people a sense of their own worth and dignity.”416
3.4 Towards a Jesuit Networking: Comparison JRS-AJAN
Most of the interviewed experts emphasized the idea that “JRS is more than a
network.”417 Especially insistent on this idea were Magriñá and Czerny, both privileged
witnesses418 to the formalizing stage of JRS in Rome. And it is true; JRS has been an
interesting case study, but in order to outline the lessons in terms of transnational Jesuit
networking, I should be aware that beyond being a network, JRS is an international NGO
and an international apostolic institution of the Society. To emphasize the Jesuit
networking features, I am going to compare JRS with another example of Jesuit
transnationality: the African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN) founded in December 2002
by Michael Czerny, former Social Justice Secretary.419
Mark Raper has said “Czerny took the networking lessons from JRS and built up
AJAN.”420 Czerny agrees that for him the “more important aspects of JRS were the
networking ones,” and these were what he tried to further and promote in establishing
AJAN. This is what makes AJAN interesting; it is a young initiative which incorporates
some lessons learned from JRS. Moreover it is lead by Czerny, former Social Justice
Secretary, who was in charge of the first systematization of the Jesuit networking to
416
Vella, Everybody, 32.
“It is important to recognize JRS as a full-blown international NGO and an institutionalized
ministry of the Society, much more than a network.” Social Justice Secretariat (SJS), Guidelines for
Networking in the Social Area, 10.
418
Magriñá as JRS International Director, and Czerny as Social Justice Secretary.
419
AJAN is the answer that the Jesuit African assistancy (Jesuit Assistancy of Africa and
Madagascar, JESAM) has given to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. There were almost 25 Jesuit initiatives in this
field spread throughout 10 countries, when the Society of Jesus decided to build up a network to better
respond to this global challenge. It was in 2000 when, after a worldwide meeting in Durban (South Africa)
about the global impact of the pandemic, a group of Jesuits asked the Superior General for a new
secretariat similar to the JRS. In this case they asked for a Jesuit AIDS Service to “facilitate, enable and
promote the apostolate of HIV/AIDS in the areas of service, prevention, care, orphans and theological
development.” (Ted Rogers and Ferdinand Muhigirwa (et al.) “To the Society of Jesus about HIV/AIDS,
Coolock House, South Africa, 16 July 2000” in Promotio Iustitiae nº 74, 2001/1.) This letter was taken up
by JESAM and influenced the Meeting of Provincials at Loyola in September 2000. Later on, Kolvenbach
encouraged the JESAM to take the lead at the assistancy level. (During the five years before of this
initiative, JESAM had been developing a similar initiative, under the direction of Ted Rogers, called Jesuit
AIDS Network. But it was consider neither Assistancy work nor a priority, just a kind of research on AIDS
works.) Finally, on December 2002, Michael Czerny, former Social Justice Secretary, started the African
Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN).
420
Raper, Personal Interview.
417
83
which I referred above.421 In this section, I am going to (1) explain the objectives and
structure of AJAN, (2) do a brief comparison with JRS, and (3) from the common
features shared by JRS and AJAN I will outline the features of a Jesuit networked
institution.
3.4.1 Vision and Structure
The best definition I have found of AJAN is “an excellent example of
mainstreaming HIV-related issues into all the activities Jesuits perform continentwide.”422 To help this to happen, AJAN functions are:
(1) To encourage Jesuits doing AIDS ministry with a greater vision of their own
mission and encourage all Jesuits to introduce AIDS awareness at every level in all types
of work, including structures of Jesuit formation. AJAN provides information, training,
accompaniment, and community-building spaces such as assemblies for Jesuits working
with AIDS.
(2) To amplify Jesuit AIDS initiatives and coordinate them into a vital network
with one voice. In this sense AJAN provide such services to the Jesuit AIDS initiatives
as offering advice, information, startup funds, or helping with donors. At this level there
are important regional assemblies or gatherings on a provincial or regional basis. Also,
AJAN uses communication strategies to promote and qualify the Jesuit AIDS work:
Books and audiovisuals, website, and a specialized documentation center.
(3) To connect this network with the Society of Jesus and others like SECAM,
AMECEA, and K-CHAT,423 AJAN provide training, conferences, and participates in
debates and public acts as part of wider networks of AIDS awareness in Africa and
internationally. AJAN is the African Jesuits in AIDS and the network is their face for the
rest of the world. It is a link with the assistancy, with the Jesuit curia, and every other
institution.
For doing this work, the structure of AJAN is centered in Nairobi at a place called
AJAN-House that has a small staff and great mobility. The role of this center is mainly to
421
Social Justice Secretariat, Guidelines for Networking in the Social Area, (Rome, 2003).
AJAN, Report of African Jesuits AIDS ministries 2002-2006 (Nairobi: AJAN, 2006) 65.
423
AJAN, Report, 38. SECAM (Symposium of Catholic Bishops Conference Africa and
Madagascar), AMECEA (Association of Member Episcopal Conference in Eastern Africa), K-CHAT
(Kenya Catholic HIV and AIDS Taskforce).
422
84
coordinate the network, manage common communication strategies, publications,
organize and promote training, assist local initiatives, and host a center for
documentation. Besides the coordinator only four or five other persons are working at
AJAN-House. 424 Czerny emphasizes that AJAN is not just this small structure but all the
Jesuits in Africa “who are serving the infected, the affected, the vulnerable.”425
3.4.2 Comparison JRS-AJAN
Speaking of AJAN, Czerny says that for him it was clear that the response should
be based and rooted in Africa amongst African Jesuits, the projects had to be of the
African provinces, and the efforts had to favour Jesuit ownership, staffing and
leadership. This way of projecting the network establishes clear differences with the JRS
project.
(1) Different focus. The different focus of JRS and AJAN help to explain their
different structures. Humanitarian emergency interventions in refugee crisis require large
amount of resources, for a short period of time, in different places of the planet. This
requires an international taskforce with ability to act on the Bangkok model of JRS.
However, a broader focus like AIDS asks for a more transversal incidence, education,
social awareness, and community building solutions that are proper for a local,
inculturated, and long-term intervention. That is to say that AIDS, as a problem, asks for
more rooted answers, long-term interventions, discreet presence, focus on inclusion, etc.
The emphasis on local answers, says Czerny, “it is a requirement of AIDS, which is
deeply personal, spiritual, even familiar.” This second model is proper to networks like
AJAN that need, by definition, a strong local link, closer to provinces and assistances
than to the General Curia level.
(2) Different role. While JRS is an agency network,426 AJAN is a support
network, a provider of services to our institutions. The main reason of this difference is
that JRS has acquired the structure of an international apostolic institution and AJAN is a
pure network. While JRS focuses on work with refugees through its network, AJAN’s
424
Office administrator, accountant, Jesuits scholastics in regency, interns, and very few staff who
contributes eventually for specific contributions like finances or communications.
425
Michael Czerny, Personal Interview through e-mail, April 2008.
426
Here I am citing the different roles of a network defined by Mendizábal, Op.Cit.
85
targets are Jesuits and Jesuit AIDS works. It is true that AJAN partners with other
networks outside the Society, but the main work of AJAN-House is mainly to train
Jesuits, report to Jesuits Governance structures, coordinate Jesuits work-groups, increase
awareness within the Society, and encourage the AIDS ministry in all types of Jesuit
works. While JRS can develop interventions and plans by itself as an institution with
operative freedom, AJAN-House by itself does not develop any direct action with people
affected by HIV/AIDS. It relies on the work of the network of Jesuit institutions.
(3) Different scope. While AJAN is an assistancy network, JRS is a “network of
the whole society.”427 The AIDS problem, says Czerny, is mainly African; “There are 6
Jesuits outside Africa involved in AIDS.” AJAN is linked with the Moderator of the
Conference of African Provincials (JESAM), JRS is linked with the Superior General.
AJAN emphasizes the local level, and stresses the ownership by the local Society of
Jesus, while JRS emphasizes the transnationality of the Jesuit body. Why is this?
“Because the problem is at the assistancy level,” says Czerny.
After only 5 years of life, it is probably too soon to define a clear institutional
structure. A recent evaluation (March 2007) considered AJAN a network in its first
charismatic stage, in which the structures are still being settled and most of the work
depends on the coordinator. The evaluation says that Czerny is not only the founder, “he
is the Network’s motor and memory.”428 The fact that there have not been yearbooks
before 2006, or the detected need of changing the structure, even the problem of a weak
commitment of the Provincials for the country or regional coordination,429 point toward a
network that is clearly not yet settled.
But here, regarding my case study, the AJAN comparison helps me to distinguish
the consequences of an institutional development, from its original network features.
AJAN is mainly a support network, whose main functions are to facilitate the AIDS
works, provide services, build communities, and filter and amplify information. In this
sense, AJAN is a pure network closer to the model of JRS in its initial stage, when the
networking and switchboard functions were mainly the objective among a group of JRS
427
SJS, Networking, 7.
AJAN, Evaluation, 16
429
Ibid, 14.
428
86
people working within their own agencies and institutions. Having both institutions in
mind has made outlining the following section easier.
3.4.4 Characteristics of a Jesuit Networked Institution
Comparing AJAN and JRS, I can outline an initial approach to a set of common
features of Transnational Jesuit Networked Institutions. The previous research on both
institutions allows me to enumerate the following characteristics:
(1) Supra-provincial institutions answering global problems with a clear
mandate. By definition, the scope of these institutions is wider than the Jesuit province,
they have a clear focus (they are answering a defined global or regional problem), and
they have specific authority, objectives and lines of action. This makes it possible to
discern the actions and evaluate the work. A clear example is the mandate dilemma for
JRS.430
(2) Tapping into existing resources and building on continuing initiatives. This
kind of institution only makes sense if it taps into existing infrastructure. Both initiatives
started from works that the Society was already developing; they are not being built up
from above, but the need was already detected and the initial local initiatives in place.
JRS was founded as a network of an extensive group of projects already developed
mainly in the East Asia, India, USA, and Africa assistances.431 When AJAN started,
there were already 25 different Jesuits initiatives related to AIDS.
(3) Built over the official structure of the Society, linked to central governance.
Even when the different scope of the networks was clear, both initiatives began with the
structural decision of building on the “official structure” of the Society, JRS at an
international level, and AJAN at an assistancy level. “The official structure for the
governance of the Society constitutes a framework for developing global and regional
co-operation and networking.”432 Both have central offices and staff, and both are works
directly linked to the central governance (General Curia or Assistancy respectively,)
working under its umbrella and authority.
430
See “The JRS Mandate Dilemma,” section 3.3.2.1 of this thesis.
A non extensive list of works in Refugee issues previous to the JRS foundation can be found in
Promotio Iustitiae 19 (1980): 161-162.
432
“The secretariats of the General curia must continue to play an important role in establishing
networks.” GC 34, d21,14.
431
87
(4) Using the interdisciplinary Jesuit body and expertise. Both are committed to a
specific focus of the apostolic mission and look at the Society from the perspective of a
transversal dimension that could be present in all works. For AJAN, “the Jesuit approach
to AIDS is the issue that cuts across every apostolate in Africa,” and this is why AJANhouse works with all type of initiatives, animating works in education, spirituality,
pastoral work, and the social apostolate. JRS aspires to use the international Jesuit body
of experience, knowledge and best practices, partnering with all kind of Jesuit
institutions that contribute to the refugee cause. They are not works of a specific sector;
both institutions try to work from the perspective of their focus on the multiple types of
Jesuit institutions.
(5) Relying on the mission of the Society: faith that does justice. Both initiatives
understand themselves as part of the apostolic body of the Society. The faith dimension
is a key part of their development, and the Jesuit identity is not hidden at all. As JRS
states in the first item of its charter, AJAN also considers itself intimately connected to
the mission of the Society, in its case with the Jesuit AIDS-related ministries. This is
clear when JRS understands its work as an “effective sign of God’s love and
reconciliation,”433 and AJAN defines its mission as an attempt to integrate AIDS relief
into all Jesuit “ministries as the incarnation of our preferential option for the poor.”434
The dimension of justice that ignites the Jesuit commitment is clearly rooted in a
personal love for Christ.
(6) Working with a clear ethical framework. As a consequence of the previous
feature and as apostolic bodies of the Society, these networks inherit the ethical corpus of
the Catholic Church acting as an important framework in the ambiguous work of
humanitarian interventions or strategies facing the AIDS/HIV pandemic. Catholic Social
Teaching is key for these institutions to choose specific presences or types of works,
public positions, strategies of intervention, advocacy policies, etc.
(7) Cooperation and partnership, networking with civil society. An intrinsic part
of both projects is the priority already stated of networking as a new style of working
433
434
JRS Charter #15.
AJAN assembly, September 2003.
88
apostolically in the Society.435 JRS states that cooperation combined with partnership is
the second strategy in its guidelines,436 and the third dimension of the AJAN’s mission is
directly stated as connecting this network to the Society and others. To partner Jesuits
and other collaborators is a “key and beautiful feature of JRS,”437 and both institutions
have been developing links with other similar networks and civil organizations.
(SECAM, AMECEA, K-CHAT438 are examples in the case of AJAN,439 and various
human right networks in the United Nations, or international campaigns to stop the use
of child soldiers, or to ban landmines, on the JRS side).
(8) Working with Church structures. It is also important to recognize the
ecclesial dimension of these structures that link to the Church as part of their mission.
AJAN works with the Episcopal Conferences leading workshops, organizing
conferences, publishing brochures, and forming pastoral agents. JRS seeks to work in
collaboration with the local Church as part of its way of proceeding440 and develops
important partnerships with other religious orders such as SVD, FMM, Vedruna Sisters,
Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Society of the Sacred Heart, many of whose
members belong to JRS and work within the network. In many cases like Angola, Chad,
Sri Lanka, and Colombia, “the close collaboration with the Church gives JRS a special
strength.”441
3.5. Outcomes: Jesuit Transnational Potentialities
My research has shown interesting similarities of the structure and lines of work
to what I am modeling as transnational Jesuit apostolic institution. Some of the features
come from being a faith-based institution, others for the transnational scope of the
actions or the networking procedures, and others just for the specific spirituality and
Jesuit way of proceeding. The final outcome of this research is to understand the
advantages and potentialities that the transnational models highlight in our apostolic
structures. These are:
435
SJS, Networking, 4.
JRS Guidelines #9-12.
437
Kolvenbach, Accompany, 78.
438
See footnote 423.
439
AJAN, Report, 38.
440
JRS Guidelines #11.
441
JRS, Our Way Forward, 9.
436
89
(1) Orientation to mission. From the secular perspective, the main feature of these
kinds of networks is the strength of the shared values beyond instrumental goals proper
to transnational corporations.442 No unifying principle other than religion can so
successfully centralize and homogenize principles and ways of proceeding. Lindenberg
and Bryant443 stated that the global organizational trends in faith-based institutions are to
move toward more coordinated rather then purely decentralized or unitary models.444 The
first highlighted dimension is the ability to build up mission-oriented structures through
this model: a global network of institutions with common values and vision. The
governance structure and the decision-making process of these institutions are based on
the shared religious values,445 and the strength of the “cultural power”446 of the common
discourse embedded in these organizations should not be diminished. This is why
organizations like JRS can manage authority, power, and resources at a more central
level, with the strength of central support services such as finance, procurement, and
human resources management. Other related potentialities are the strong global identity,
and the ability to response rapidly to emergencies. Mateo Aguirre, former JRS West
Africa regional director, confirms, “The Rome office was like a lighthouse which can
see the world globally and identify the greatest needs.”447 The role of the international
office for him is to assure that JRS is truly Jesuit and truly universal. The strength of the
common values and vision, and the benefits of a clear mission, often led from a central
office, is one of the strengths of transnational models for religious organizations.
(2) Structural capacity. The transnationality infrastructure of these institutions
brings a double dimensional advantage regarding (a) the institutional verticality and (b)
the transnational connectivity.
442
Keck and Sikkink, Op.Cit., 30.
Lindenberg & Bryant, Op.Cit.,144.
444
It is interesting how Save the Children, and Care international, are global institutions that
having started as unitary corporate organizations, they developed into separate organizations, and finally
go back into a federation structure. In both cases the reason was the need of keeping common standards,
and maintain a single, clear brand identity. The case of MSF is a transition from independent
organizational model toward a weak umbrella coordinating structures because of problems of overlap,
duplicated services, and differences in views about the identity. Ibid, 140.
445
Ferris, Faith-based, 312
446
Berger refers to the cultural resources such as symbols, ideologies, and moral authority
embedded in the value system of these institutions. Berger, Op.Cit. 35.
447
Valcárcel, Wound, 202.
443
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(a) Faith-based organizations are usually built over a previous infrastructure that
has been in development for ages. As an inheritance of the colonial period, transnational
Catholic organizations have people on the ground in most of the countries where they
work and offer direct access to local partners throughout the powerful network of local
church communities and church-related organizations.448 The vertical capacity allows the
use of existing local social infrastructures, long-term relationships, and consequently, a
high guarantee of sustainability. This same institutional capacity relies on the variety of
institutions working in very different sectors that generates an optimum structure for a
wide interdisciplinary approach. This model highlights the ability to build up synergies
among already existing institutions beyond individual sectors and areas of expertise. This
is what allows JRS a wide range of action from local presences at camps to advocacy at
the international level, and for short-term accompaniment to long-term solutions.
Interdisciplinary and multitracking approaches as well as partnership were the two
highlighted features of a Jesuit way of networking,449 which potentiality is now enhanced
by the presence “at all the various levels from the grassroots to international bodies, and
in all the various approaches from the direct forms of service, through working with
groups and movements, to research, reflection, and publication.”450
(b) When I say transnational connectivity, I mean the horizontal capability for
interconnecting different worldwide communities and organizations with the same
values. This transnational potential is clear in terms of communication, shared resources,
intercultural approaches, credibility, and, in this case, speed and accuracy of
humanitarian answers. This horizontal expansion of the faith-based institutions possesses
great potentiality in terms of resources for peacebuilding,451 and as I will argue, it is also
a great advantage for promoting global advocacy.452
(3) Potentiality for advocacy and public impact. The ability to mobilize
information and to create topics and categories to persuade large organizations and
448
Agbonkhianmenghe E. Orobator, Op.Cit. 32.
See “The time of the networks,” section 2.3.2 of this thesis.
450
Peter H. Kolvenbach, “On the Social Apostolate,” in Promotio Iustitiae 73 (2003) 25.
451
This is called “religious polycentrism” in Appleby’s words, and it is an “enormous opportunity
to mobilize the resources of the religious tradition for peacebuilding.” Scott R. Appleby, The Ambivalence
of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
2000) 41.
452
Ferris, Faith-based, 322.
449
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governments453 is one of the important potentialities of these structures. I will
differentiate (a) the ethical framework, and (b) the structural dimension.
(a) The clear ethical framework of these institutions and its foundation in human
dignity focuses every mission on the human rights framework, so that poverty and
injustice become human rights and political problems. From a Catholic point of view,
advocacy is an ethical obligation. “Visceral charity”454 is inhumane and it has to be
balanced with justice. Scholars confirm that these particular values and strong
motivations make Christian organizations especially potent for justice agendas, because
the principle of neutrality is not the absolute criterion for their action.455 This broader
template that characterizes church organizations accounts for the causes of the situations
and gives a set of values and beliefs.456 This capacity is called “symbolic politics” in
advocacy networks, that is, the ability to call upon symbols, actions, values, or stories
which make sense of a situation for an audience that is frequently far away.457 It is also
called “frame alignment” and is an essential component of networks’ political
strategies.458 In this sense the Christian narratives, the language of hope, love, justice and
reconciliation are essential tools of JRS’s mission.
(b) Transnational faith-based institutions are alternative networks that can be
“switches”459 which “multiply the channels of access to the international system.”460
453
Keck and Sikkink, Op.Cit., 2.
Agbonkhianmenghe E. Orobator, Op.Cit. 9.
455
Ferris, Faith-Based, 319.
456
Bryant Myers, Op.Cit. 38.
457
Keck and Sikkink, Op.Cit. 16.
458
Ibid. 17.
459
Manuel Castells refers to the “switches,” the links among networks, as the real power-holders
of the social system in our informational age. “This is why to counter networks of power,” says Castells,
“alternative networks need to be introduced.” Castells stated the networked based social structure as main
feature of our informational age. He defends that “switches connecting the networks are the privileged
instruments of power. Thus the switches are the power-holders. Since networks are multiple, the interoperating codes and switches between networks become the fundamental sources in shaping, guiding, and
misguiding societies.” Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 1996) 502.
“Power does not reside in institutions, not even in the state or in large corporations. It is located in
the networks that structure society. Or rather in the switches.” Manuel Castells, "Afterword: why networks
matter" in Helen McCarthy, Paul Miller, Paul Skidmore (Eds) Network logic: who governs in an
interconnected world? (London: Demos, 2004): 221-225. 224.
Here “switch” is the same concept than “hub” for the Social Justice Secretariat in “Globalization
and Marginalization: Our Global Apostolic Response.” I prefer switch because a hub is a simple
connection between the parts of a network while a switch implies intelligence on the connection. A switch
is a smart hub that follows some criteria to do its work.
454
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Traditionally marginalized groups and non-traditional international actors can be
empowered through these institutions. Jesuits have understood this concept of
participation461 as essential to justice and are committed “to empower marginalized
persons collectively to become actors in the new global context.”462 As Mark Raper
affirms, “the body of the Society is a perfect match for so many problems of people
marginalised locally. We can offer them community locally and we can connect
internationally.”463 Sugrañes understands perfectly how part of the JRS mission is the
“responsibility to be [the refugees’] voice in international fora.”464 JRS’s grassroots work
in more than 55 countries worldwide provides valuable information for taking up
individual cases, denouncing human rights violations, lobbying for policy changes, and
raising awareness of refugee issues.465 The special synergies with institutions like Human
Rights Watch,466 the Arrupe scholarship at Oxford, and the presence of JRS in power
centers such as Geneva, Rome, Brussels, and Washington, is just part of this great
potential for global inclusion and international advocacy work.
A mission inspired within a horizon of social justice does not allow for
cooperation with unjust and oppressive situations that are non-compatible with the basic
concepts of common good and participation. Church networks make “perfect
infrastructure to catalyse international collaboration on advocacy.”467 It is not by chance
that “to advocate” is part of the JRS mission. To defend the rights of refugees and
forcibly displaced people through both grassroots and international advocacy is one of
460
Keck and Sikkink, Op.Cit., 1.
The promotion of a global solidarity implies a concept of social justice that requires the
promotion of participation in the transnational common good and inclusion at all levels. See “Mission in
Global Times,” section 2.2.3 of this thesis.
462
Social Justice Secretariat (SJS), Globalization and Marginalization: Our Global Apostolic
Answer (Rome: Social Justice Secretariat, 2006) 33.
463
Raper, Interview for the GC35.
464
Valcárcel, Wound, 236.
“As an NGO and as an Order within the Catholic Church our most valuable asset is not largescale logistics or huge funding campaigns. What is most valuable about JRS is our on-the-ground contact
with people in the most remote areas. How can we bring their stories to the heart of the European
Parliament, the European Commission and even the Council? John Dardis, “Showing Love and Care to
Those Most in Need” in Valcárcel, Wound, 260.
465
JRS, International Strategic Issues 2006-2010 (Rome: JRS, 2006) 17.
466
Valcárcel, Wound, 160.
467
Global networks, supported by umbrella organizations such as the World Council of Churches,
Caritas Internationalis, and World Vision, offer an opportunity for coordinated advocacy at the national,
regional and international level. Ferris, Faith-Based, 322.
461
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the priorities of JRS today.
3.6 Conclusions
This thesis is about the suitability of religious transnational structures to develop
an important competency in our global world. Applying these categories to Jesuit
transnational apostolic institutions like JRS enhances specific possibilities for apostolic
structures and opens up the development of a new concept of public mission based on the
Church’s proposal of global interconnectedness and solidarity. All of the research and
later attempts to systematize it has been an experiment to learn from the successful JRS
experience.
I have used theoretical models from Ferris, Berger, Mendizábal, Lindenberg and
Bryant, and Keck and Sikkink as guidelines for different networking aspects of these
transnational institutions. An “aseptic” perspective highlights the flexibility and
accommodative structure while it assures a global mission and principles. A faith-based
model emphasizes a new type of presence and accompaniment with a clear ethical
framework. Finally, a transnational advocacy network model calls our attention to the
potentiality for public impact of these structures.
The research on JRS has been an opportunity to study how the focus and scope of
the mission are key variables in the definition of the apostolic structure. The governance
dilemma pointed toward the need of Jesuit structures to adapt to supra-provincial
missions. Following the JRS case study and comparing it with the AJAN experience, I
have outlined main features for transnational Jesuit apostolic institutions. The experience
shows that these new type of apostolic structures are (1) supra-provincial institutions
answering global problems with a clear mandate, (2) tapping into existing resources and
building on continuing initiatives, (3) built over the official structure of the Society and
linked to central governance, (4) using the Jesuit interdisciplinary body and expertise, (5)
relying on the mission of the Society of Jesus of faith that does justice, (6) working
within a clear ethical framework, (7) networking with civil society organizations, and (8)
working with Church structures.
My question stretches beyond the descriptive research: What are the advantages
of these structures? Why are they flourishing in answering globalization? Literature on
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transnational religious institutions has helped me to highlight three main potentialities of
these structures: (1) the strong orientation towards the common mission, (2) the powerful
structural capacities in terms of wide scope and interdisciplinary body, and (3) the
possibilities of these structures regarding advocacy and public impact.
The main outcome of the chapter is to understand JRS as a successful institution
because it utilizes the strengths of this model. The vision of Arrupe worked so well
because JRS’s structure makes it a capable agent in our global world and its way of
proceeding takes advantage of its transnational strengths.468 That is, (1) to be a social
justice driven institution, (2) to use the transnational potentiality of the Society of Jesus
developing multitracking and supra sectorial strategies, and (3) to emphasis the work on
public impact and advocacy.
At Loyola 2000, after noticing the increasing number of networks emerging in the
Society, Kolvenbach said to the provincials, “we hope to make them more effective by
following the example of JRS.”469 In the final chapter, I will attempt to show how the
JRS example can truly be a model for the Society of Jesus to develop its global apostolic
mission with more than simple peer-to-peer networking, focused on social justice issues,
and with the full strength of its transnational structure.
468
Even while it is too early to make any statement about AJAN and its developments, the
research points toward the idea that institutions like AJAN could improve its capacities as transnational
Jesuit apostolic institutions implementing more interdisciplinary approaches and strengthen the focus on
advocacy. In 2003 the AJAN assembly already detected the need of extensive advocacy, promote
participation, and strengthen the partnerships with other networks. In the same line, the recommendations
from the recent audit are to further develop capacity for advocacy, a more coherent fundraising and a
stronger communications strategy. AJAN, Evaluation, 20.
469
Father General’s Letter on Loyola 2000, 8 December 2000. Quoted in SJS, Networking, 13.
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Chapter IV. Jesuit Mission Transnational Network
4.0 Introduction
In the previous pages of this thesis I have developed various arguments and
narratives to express the importance of transnationality as a defining element in how the
Society of Jesus deploys its mission in the public arena. Using the Jesuit Refugee Service
as an example, I have explained how the Jesuits are developing a new understanding of
public mission, how it evolved over time, what type of features it has, and for which
structures it best fits. The model of transnational religious institutions and the research
developed in the previous chapter gave us the tools to understand that the power of the
Society of Jesus as a transnational network is its infrastructure with the capacity to act as
a unique body with shared principles and values.470 Raper confirmed that “taking
advantage of being deeply inserted in so many places and acting commonly is something
that we are just beginning to understand.” 471 Today’s challenge is to build up the
capacity to act internationally.
The background motivation for this challenge relies on (1) the opportunities given
by the global context, (2) the potentiality of the Jesuit structures, but especially on (3) the
intrinsic call towards a universal mission that resides within the Jesuit vocation. I have
argued that for the Jesuits to be loyal to their vocation they should develop global
apostolic solutions as a universal body. For these solutions, they must renew their sense
of global mission and maximize the effects of their apostolic structures using the
strengths of transnational networks.
After the 35th General Congregation the Society of Jesus is ready to take the next
step: to introduce in apostolic planning all the insights of supra-provincial collaboration,
networking, and partnership, already present in their documents for decades. GC 35 has
470
471
Margaret E. Keck, Op.Cit. 30.
Raper, interview during GC 35.
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been a time of explosion of global awareness for the need of structures for a universal
mission. This Congregation has been an invitation to renew the global vocation of the
Society, and to rethink how the Society is present in a global world. This thesis tries to
encourage global apostolic structures following the lessons learned from JRS in terms of
Jesuit networking. The Jesuits should develop new patterns of linkage, and what I am
going to call the Jesuit Mission Transnational Network is just a model of institutional
synergy built over the current Jesuit infrastructure following JRS insights.
In this chapter I will to review (1) what I have found in the Society of Jesus as far
as transnational tendencies, (2) the promising changes towards a global mission that have
been introduced in its structure, (3) what I think should be the main features of this Jesuit
Mission Transnational Network, and (4) some examples of these type of initiatives that
are actually going on in the Society.
4.1 Jesuit Transnational Tendencies
In previous sections it has been demonstrated that the Jesuits know the
potentiality of their international structure472 and that they are discovering its vocation to
develop global apostolic answers. JRS experience has revealed that the Society has some
connatural tendencies towards transnational actions that explode the very moment the
correct channel is created.473 What means has the Society of Jesus toward this new way
of agency? Why do these structures fit so well in the Jesuit way of proceeding? Briefly, I
can affirm that the Jesuit advantages towards this model are based on its transnational
and interdisciplinary apostolic body, its global and communitarian spirituality, its
innovative and adaptive tradition, and its accumulated experience after more than 450
472
See “The Era of the Networks,” section 2.3.2 of this thesis.
As an example this declaration of intentions can be read in the 4th decree of GC 34: “Part of our
responsibility as an international apostolic body is to work with others at the regional and global level for a
more just international order. The Society must therefore examine its resources and try to assist in the
formation of an effective international network so that, also at this level, our mission can be carried out.”
General Congregation 34, D4, 23.
Effectively, the Jesuits are doing impressive work in (1) networks: Ignatian Solidarity Network in
USA, AJAN, International Jesuit Network for Development; (2) solidarity support: Entreculturas, Fe y
Alegría, Alboan, South Asian People’s initiative; and (3) advocacy, in Washington (Office of Social and
International Ministries of the US Jesuit Conference), in Brussels (OCIPE) and elsewhere (Jesuit Refugee
Service). “Seeking Peace in a Violent Word.” Workshop on violence and War. 15-17 September, Sta
Severa (Rome). in Promotio Iustitiae, nº89, 2005/4, 20.
473
See “Jesuit Transnational Potentialities,” section 3.5 of this thesis.
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years of history. This is what comprises its infrastructure, its vision, its methodology, and
its expertise.
(1) Infrastructure. The Society, according to Magriñá, offers “a connatural way of
working in a team and a plural analysis from the perspective of an institution which is
present in more than 127 countries.”474 In January 2008, 18.815 Jesuits composed the
Society of Jesus,475 and this international apostolic body allows the Jesuits multiple
presences at international, national or local levels, with institutions from a wide range of
disciplines, covering all tracks of global interaction, and accumulating an extensive range
of insights and sensibilities.
(2) The vision that moves this network is Ignatian spirituality. There are three
Ignatian variables towards transnationality here. First, the global tendency to universality
expressed in the first chapter, an impulse to embrace the entirety of humankind, to go
wherever needed, to the “whole world.”476 Second, the strong sense of apostolic mission,
to be sent as companions of the Son – key in terms of mobility, availability, and to
deploy an apostolic body “ad dispersionem.” And third, the communitarian concept of
faith that does justice, rooted in the idea of justice based on a sacred and deep concept of
the human being and the divine call to build a human community. From an Ignatian
perspective, the work for justice is a communitarian process. The Jesuits have the clear
decision to collaborate at every level for a more just international order,477 embodying all
these insights in “communities of solidarity”478 which are inspired collectively with a
vision of human dignity and solidarity. The global view and the perspective of the poor
generate the Ignatian “magis tension-principle.” That means that the voice amplified
through this network will be for the benefit of the most needy and also that the priorities
of the network are imposed by criteria of human need, not institutional or historical
dynamics.
474
Magriñá, Interview during GC35.
Statistics from the General Secretary of the Society of Jesus, 15 April 2008.
476
“Which are for the whole world, which is our house. Wherever there is need or greater utility
for our ministries, there is our house.”476 Epistolae et Monumenta P. Hieronmi Nadal, V, 469-470, cited in
O’Malley, “To Travel”, 6.
477
GC 34, D3, 23.
478
Expression used in the 3rd Decree of the General Congregation 34, attempting to address social
transformation from the cultural perspective, beyond structural change. To exert influence in the culture,
oriented to a deep change, the strategy should be to insert communities of solidarity, recovering freedoms,
restoring dignities, changing values and transforming styles of life.
475
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(3) Methodology. The Jesuits carry on an innovative and adaptive tradition that
employs a successful decision-taking methodology of discernment as an interface
between core Christian principles and a changing environment. The fundamental trust in
the goodness of creation, as well as in the ability of the individual to discern God’s
presence, allows for a rapid adaptation of the framework of values to new situations and,
therefore, the proposal of innovative solutions. This agile capacity to react makes the
Jesuits known for their groundbreaking apostolates. The Ignatian global vision and its
ideals of availability and mobility479 are intrinsic to our manner of discerning the mission
with the application of criteria regarding priorities and presences.480 The clear framework
for reflection becomes a powerful tool within this methodology affecting even the way of
understanding authority, shaping a particular Jesuit way of governance, with a clear
hierarchy and source of authority, but coherent with the subsidiarity principle, giving
considerable flexibility and authority to individuals “in the field,” favoring inculturation,
accommodation, and the adaptability needed for a global body rooted on local presences.
(4) Expertise. Throughout its history, the Society has remained faithful to a
fundamental intuition of Master Ignatius: his awareness of the great impact of learning
and teaching.481 Since 1548, with the foundation of the first school in Messina, the
Society is well known for the ministry of education. In 2007 the Society of Jesus
managed a total of 3,888 educational institutions, present in 69 countries, reaching
almost 3,000,000 students.482 This is the world’s largest private educational system with
450 years of history, and the most unique contribution that the Society can bring to the
international stage. The weight of this Jesuit expertise, for example, makes JRS known as
a humanitarian organization specialized in education.483 In general, I can affirm that the
vocation of “learned ministry” is one of the characteristics of the Jesuit way of
479
See “Link with Ignatian Global Vision,” section 1.3 of this thesis.
Wherever will be more need; wherever a more universal good may be served; wherever
people’s needs are not being met by others; and wherever it has a special contribution to make. Const. 622,
623. GC 34, D 6, 168.
481
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Our apostolic preferences, 1 January 2003, 2.
482
2007 Summary Statistics from the Secretariat of Education at Rome. Available at
http://www.sjweb.info/documents/education/sumstat2007.swf
483
In the case of JRS around 170.000 children benefit from educational projects from
kindergarten up to secondary school and even tertiary education through distance education courses. JRS,
Our way forward, 8.
480
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proceeding.484 In order to be fruitful, says Kolvenbach, the various sectors of our
apostolate require serious reflection and research, and this is a specific contribution of
the Society to the mission of the Church.485
This section has elucidated intrinsic features of the Society Jesus that make it
suitable for transnational structures. The infrastructure, the vision, the methodology, and
the expertise of the Jesuits, shows a natural tendency towards a worldwide action, a
global mission.
4.2 Towards a Real Global Mission
It is one thing to talk about the global mission of the Society and another to
implement it. I have shown how the awareness of the universality of the Jesuit vocation
and the global dimension of its mission are clearly present in the documents of the
Society of Jesus. Now is the occasion to ask how to implement these insights. How is the
Society of Jesus working as an international body and “seeking synergies in service of a
universal mission”?486 What are the structures and tools Jesuits have developed in order
to bring this about? GC 35 expresses no doubt regarding the importance of structures for
apostolic planning in carrying out the Jesuit mission today and it emphasizes the
apostolic effectiveness of our work if we act consistently with the “extraordinary
potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body.”487 I
would contend that Jesuits are not facing a problem of lack of resources or vision, but a
serious problem of implementation. In an institution with an “unconditional consecration
to the mission”488 in which the apostolic work is its visible form, 489 this is not a simple
problem, but a major and complex one.
In order to answer these questions, this section shows: (a) how the global
apostolic priorities are an important tool for the embodiment of the global mission
484
CG 34, D 26, 18-20.
In 2003 Kolvenbach insisted that the research and reflection, teaching and publication, in
theology, philosophy, and the sciences is a specific contribution of the Society to the mission of the
Church. Kolvenbach, Our apostolic preferences, 3.
486
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Collaboration, 20.
487
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 43.
488
GC 34, D26, 24.
489
“Since [the Society] is essentially apostolic, and our true identity should be manifested through
the apostolate.” Pedro Arrupe, “Our Four Apostolic Priorities: address to the Congregation of Procurators 5
October 1970” in Arrupe, Other Apostolates Today, 2.
485
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through Jesuit structures; (b) how this process of implementation asks for missionoriented structures beyond secretariats and peer-to-peer networks within apostolic areas;
and (c) how the Society is already implementing changes towards these new type of
structures.
4.2.1 Global Apostolic Preferences
Let us go back to Arrupe and the first chapter of this thesis and his concern to
“coordinate the work in a concerted effort at a higher level.”490 He was convinced that
for Jesuits to organize a common concerted action they should proceed in an organic
mode, beginning planning on a universal scale.491 As part of an initial stage in the
corporate sense of mission492 and following a recommendation from GC 31, 493 Arrupe
stated four priorities based on the result of a sociological survey494 of the whole Society.
These were: (1) Theological Reflection, (2) Social Apostolate, (3) Apostolate of
Education, and (4) The Mass Media Apostolate.495 As a result of those options, Arrupe
established special Secretariats in the Curia for developing and coordinating the activities
necessary in each of those fields. The idea was to develop an adequate response to the
contemporary needs of the world and, at the same time, give more unity, coherence, and
visibility to the Jesuit apostolic body. The Secretariats were born as global structures for
coordinating specific dimensions of the apostolic mission of the Society. The global
apostolic priorities and the secretariats were the first Jesuit tools and structures towards
the embodiment of the global mission; as I have shown, years later, JRS was also part of
the same dynamic.
GC 34 continues this development by recommending that Father General, with
the Provincials and Moderators,496 discern the greater needs of the universal Church and
490
Arrupe, Spiritual Journey, 25. See “The Jesuit Potentiality,” section 1.4 of this thesis.
“We need to reeducate ourselves for apostolic project at a larger scale.” Pedro Arrupe,
“Nuestra Respuesta al Desafío” in Arrupe, Cartas, 67-99. 77-78.
492
See “Justice and Society of Jesus,” section 2.1.3 of this thesis.
493
The need was stated for a commission for a deeper study of the choices and promotion of
ministries. GC 31, Decrees 21 and 22. “The Better Choice and Promotion of Ministries”, and “The
Commission for Promoting the Better Choice of Ministries.”
494
AR XV, 1970, P.538
495
Pedro Arrupe, “Our Four Apostolic Priorities,” in Pedro Arrupe, Other Apostolates, 1-8.
The methodology for selecting the apostolic priorities followed the Ignatian criterion for choosing
ministries and the proper character of the Jesuit institute. GC 32, D 21, n 12
496
The Presidents of the Conferences of Major Superiors
491
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establish global and regional priorities.497 The Moderators progressively assumed a
growing role in the progress of supra-provincial cooperation, and Kolvenbach made of
them an indispensable tool in discernment for the apostolic body of the Universal
Society. In parallel to the work of the central secretariats, for the Provinces and
Conferences to establish their own priorities, they had “to take into consideration” the
choices made by the Society in the apostolic preferences voiced by the universal body.498
In accordance with this, in 2003, Kolvenbach established a new set of five apostolic
preferences499 following the main directions of the Society’s mission already expressed
in GC 34 and meetings of Major Superiors. These are (1) Africa, (2) China, (3) The
Intellectual Apostolate, (4) Interprovincial works and houses in Rome, and (5) migrants
and the Jesuit Refugee Service.
It is important to highlight here how a specific apostolic work like JRS made it
into the apostolic preferences of the whole Society500 and, especially, how Father
General commends to the Conferences of Major Superiors this specific apostolic
preference. JRS, now a real option for the whole Society, is commended to the middle
governance structures because the situation of the people on the move “is not everywhere
the same.” Once established as a priority, the central government left to the assistancies
the responsibility to coordinate and narrow down the mission. In parallel to the
conferences’ growing role, the secretariats created to organize the Jesuit ministries
around the first apostolic priorities developed a sound infrastructure of networks and
coordination structures in each apostolic area.501
But even though these structures help, difficulties regarding the embodiment of
the global mission remain. The Society is at a new stage where there are two problems
with these structures: (1) the growing focus on the universal mission asks for a role for
497
GC 34, D 21, 28.
GC 34, D 28, 21.
499
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Our Apostolic Preferences. Letter to All Major Superiors. 1 January
498
2003.
500
Kolvenbach based this in the preferential option for the poor (GC 34, D 26, 12-14) and the
option of GC 34 for JRS (GC 34, D 3, 16)
501
Their mission is to encourage, support, and coordinate with the maximum respect for
jurisdictions, subsidiarity, and the initiative of others. Social Justice Secretariat, Networking in the Social
Apostolate, 8.
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the conferences beyond merely supra-provincial coordination;502 and (2) the
potentialities of the transnational body point toward supra-sectorial networking that does
not fit in any of the apostolic sectors.503 If the Jesuit governance structures are really
oriented to the mission,504 maybe it is time to ask if these tools for supra-provincial
cooperation are effectively helpful for the fulfillment of the Society’s mission.
4.2.2 Synergic Networking
Already in 1975 Arrupe criticized those who only believe in international
cooperation when it helps them to better carry on the task that they are already doing at
the local level. 505 He was pointing to a dimension of the mission that is not available to
individual institutions but requires more organic answers. Talking about the interprovincial Jesuit bodies, Kolvenbach asked if they, beyond forums for coordination and
interchanging information, could serve as tools for common apostolic action and
research.506 This is what I mean when I affirm that for Jesuit networking, following the
Ignatian magis, a service provider network is not the best answer over the long term.507
Here a network is not an instance for coordination, but a new body for a common
apostolic action, beyond particular benefits for the individual institutions.
This is not a thesis about networking as management strategy, but about
networking as a way of proceeding to carry out the Jesuit global mission. I am not
talking about the networks among peers that have been developed within the apostolic
sectors or similar levels of governance in the last decades. My question is: should a Jesuit
network merely animate, encourage and link what Jesuits are already doing, or should it
aspire to the maximum good that its structure can give? My proposal is that the
502
“The Conferences are structures oriented for mission, and not mere instruments of
interprovincial coordination” GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 18 a.
503
See “Jesuit Transnational Potentialities,” section 3.5 of this thesis.
504
“The Society is organized in function of its mission.” GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance,
1.
505
Pedro Arrupe, “Why Interprovincial and International Collaboration? Conference to the
Participants of a Meeting on the Society’s Interprovincial and International Apostolate” in Arrupe, Other
Apostolates, 185-197. p.186.
506
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, “A la Congregación de Provinciales, sobre el estado de la Compañía:
Loyola 20 September 1990” in Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Selección de Escritos 1983-1990 (Madrid: Curia
Provincial de España de la Compañía de Jesús, 1991) 213-152, 236.
507
See chapter III of this thesis for a development of the advantages of transnational networks,
especially the section 3.5 “Jesuit Transnational Potentialities.”
103
potentiality of our transnational body cannot be fully developed just through networks of
peers within an apostolic sector, but can achieve its full potential through networks of
institutions from different tracks and sectors, under the leadership of authorized central
nodes.
In peer-to-peer networks, each institution shares and collaborates as far as it
benefits from this collaboration. These networks are not usually overly demanding, and
the benefits are clear for everybody; usually they do not go further than a coordination
function, maximizing centralized resources, sharing best practices, or developing
corporate communication strategies. The Jesuit Ecology Network, the Jesuit Solidarity
Network, and the networks in the Jesuit educational sector like AJCU, AUSJAL, and
UNIJES are brilliant examples of this way of maximizing the use of our resources. This
is a fine strategy to manage similar works within an apostolic sector in a province,
region, or even at the international level. This can be called a symbiotic network because
every member benefits from the collaboration and the incentives are sufficient to
motivate participation. The risks are that the network depends merely on the interests of
the collaborators, and the possible polarization of the network when one or more of the
nodes are “taking advantage” because of overwhelming charism, amount of invested
resources, or unbalanced institutional strengths.
But Jesuit networking should go beyond a symbiotic relationship. Talking about
the example of JRS, Mark Raper said, “The Society has an amazing capacity to unite
around a common issue. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, so the actions
that were released by that focus on one particular problematic were quite extraordinarily
successful.”508 The objective of Jesuit networking is not to benefit the different Jesuit
works but to benefit the common mission generating an apostolic structure able to
develop a new level of mission. A Jesuit network can do more than animate and
encourage what Jesuits are already doing. It can propose, channel, and coordinate higher
levels of synergies beyond the usual reach and influence of existing institutions. This
type of networking can only be developed when large interdisciplinary bodies are
focused on a common mission (such as the Society of Jesus). This concept of a network
is not a competitive one and the benefits are only recognized if the global identity and
508
Raper, interview during GC 35.
104
vision reaches beyond every particular institution.509 Only the strength of a common
mission could overcome the conflicts of interest present in every network.510 This is why
there is the need for a structure, a mandate, and clear leadership with authority.511 The
proper word here is not “symbiosis” but “synergy,”512 and networking is no longer seen
as strategy, but has become part of the mission.513
As an example one could ask: Which institution has, as part of the same strategy,
the potential to accompany Congolese refugees in Tanzania and, at the same time,
implement advocacy policies in Brussels for a legal framework for European
transnational companies working in Africa? And what if this work is based on research
made by competent university departments that developed studies based on data
regarding NGOs working in Congo and expertise from base communities rooted in the
country for years? And what if all institutions involved in this process share the same
identity and mission? The Jesuits can implement such a powerful network. They can
develop this complex multi-level and interdisciplinary approach, and this constitutes
their best contribution at the global level. Moreover, it fits perfectly with their original
vocation.
Jesuits can develop this synergic networking by building up such types of
projects in common. They can elaborate complex answers with a large public impact
509
The orientation to mission is one of the potentialities of these transnational structures. No
unifying principle other than religion can so successfully centralize and homogenize principles and ways of
proceeding. Lindenberg & Bryant, Op.Cit.,144.
510
Michael Czerny emphasizes the dangers of a peer-to-peer networking when the nodes are not
in equal circumstances. Most times the initial networking idea can become the project of the most powerful
node which end up using the network in its own interest. Michael Czerny, personal interview by e-mail,
March-April 2008.
511
The experience is that they are not sustainable if there is inadequate investment in central
infrastructure and staff. Fernando Franco confirms that many networked initiatives in the last decade have
failed because of a lack of leadership, structures, and clear mandate.
512
I am using the concepts symbiotic and synergic networking to emphasize two radically
different objectives of the networks. While some networks look for the benefit of the members (symbiotic
networking), others look for a common effect otherwise impossible for the members (synergic
networking). I have chosen the word “symbiosis” from the biological world because its expresses
interactions between different species characterized by the benefits that each organism obtains from the
relationship. On the other hand, and even when “synergy” literally means “work together,” I am using it
here to refer “to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create
an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergy)
513
Networks like Jesuit Commons (Messina) or the Relational Peace Advocacy Network (RPAN)
are examples of this model, and will be detailed in the section 4.5 on this chapter.
105
impossible for other institutions.514 These types of structures allow the Society to access
a different plane of mission to meet the international challenges of today’s world,
generating global synergies deploying one synchronized mission in multiple places in the
world, in very different fields, and with all levels of influence.515 For that the Jesuits need
to clarify priorities, to establish structures, and to give those structures the needed
authority and mandate. Only in this way will the Society of Jesus be able to answer
global needs with the full potentiality of their resources. As I will demonstrate, GC 35
has perfectly understood the challenge.
4.2.3 New Structures for a Universal Mission
I would contend that GC 35 is the definitive step towards the embodiment of the
universal mission within the Jesuit structures. This congregation has seen an explosion of
the awareness of the global dimensions of its mission and the structural consequences of
that. In so far as the Society of Jesus is organized as a function of its mission and from a
perspective of greater universality, GC 35 has made room for universality by (1)
reinforcing the role of Father General in apostolic planning, (2) confirming the
importance of global apostolic priorities, and (3) empowering the conferences of major
superiors in a clear trend towards the internationalization of our organizational structures.
(1) The last congregation stated that the role of Father General and the central
government is “to do comprehensive apostolic planning and to animate the whole body
of the Society.”516 The Superior General is understood as mainly a source of unity in the
universal body of the Society, who recognizing the diversity and need of inculturation
must place the diversity “at the service of our universal mission and identity.”517
(2) GC 35 encouraged Father General to “continue to discern the preferences for
the Society, to review the current preferences, to update their specific content, and
514
This Jesuit network offers a public impact potentiality and dialogue possibility at five levels:
(1) international, (2) regional, (3) national, (4) provincial, and (5) local. The cooperation could be (1) a
simple exchange of information, (2) work on specific issues, (3) coalitions, or (4) networks. The
interdisciplinary body offers the possibility of one strategy with multi-track actors: (1) advocacy offices
(Washington, Brussels), (2) non-governmental organizations (JRS, FyA), (3) academic institutions (centres
of social analysis and universities), and (4) local works (grassroots initiatives, parishes, and social
apostolate works).
515
See “The Jesuit Potentiality,” section 1.4 of this thesis.
516
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 10.
517
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 7.
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develop plans and programmes that can be monitored and evaluated.”518 The global
priorities establish some of the “most important and urgent needs, more universal, or
where the Society is called to answer more generously.”519
(3) Contextualizing the conferences as structures oriented for mission, not just for
coordination,520 GC 35 states the need for an apostolic planning following the global
apostolic preferences, now with a noticeable priority over the local ones.521 In a clear
direction towards governance in service of the universal mission,522 even the province
structure is framed in light of apostolic effectiveness and effective governance.523 The
radical orientation to the mission of the Jesuit structures implies a challenge when the
global context is transforming the way Jesuits exercise their ministries. In many
documents there starts to appear the need for evaluation on every level of the structures
in terms of its contribution to the Society’s universal mission.524
In this section I have shown first, how the apostolic preferences, as privileged
expression of the universal mission formulated by the central government, become the
common ground to start global synergies; second, how definining the priorities and
implementing them through the Jesuit structure appear as the proper methodology to
518
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 40.
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Mission, 38.
520
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 18 a.
521
It is especially important that the statement says, regarding the assignments for works
depending on Conferences, “all other things being equal, the needs of Conference activities and works
have priority over those of individual provinces.” (GC 35, Draft on Decree on Governance, 20) This
affects directly the previous directions at GC 34 that indicated “at least equal priority.” (GC 34, D 21, 24).
522
This is the title of the decree on Governance in GC 35.
523
“While our vocation is to the universal Society, Provinces have been established for greater
apostolic effectiveness and more effective governance so that the specific articulation of a Jesuit’s mission
is the direct result of the animating leadership of the Provincial.” GC 35, Draft of the Decree on
Governance, 24.
524
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 18-29.
In this sense the idea of something like an “Ignatian audit” appear in many of the documents
consulted during the research. It is especially clear in Arrupe when he says “we should evaluate our works
and see if they really answer to the human needs, promoting the faith, building up communities, and
advancing justice.” (Arrupe, “Nuestra Respuesta al Desafío,” 74). GC 35 pointed toward the same idea
when proposed a reflection on provincial structures, including the “capacity of a province for developing a
comprehensive apostolic plan meeting universal needs” among the criterion of this reflection. (GC 35,
Draft of Decree on Governance, 26). The challenge is the ability to self-critique and the reflection on how
our institutions are embodying what is proclaimed. For example: to what extent is the potentiality of the
Jesuit education institutions to focus in that mission for justice? Who is being served by the research power
of the strong intellectual centers? What is their capacity of influence being used for? Where are the vision
and mission of the Society being implemented, or where is this track lost? I am talking of institutional
discernment regarding itself, a “strategic discernment ready to discard current restraints to mobility.”
Social Justice Secretariat, Globalization and Marginalization, 30.
519
107
develop the global mission; and third, how the governance structures and the authority of
the central government is the way of unifying the mission for the apostolic body.
4.2.4 Lessons Learned
Before going further, it is important to clarify certain lessons:
(1) The role of the authority: It is interesting to observe that in the new global
framework of apostolic mission, the authority of Father General becomes key at the
apostolic level. Rome should not decide how the Society is deployed at the local level,
but the principle of subsidiarity should be combined with the strength of a common
mission that needs to be formulated and actualized from a central authority. Here
subordination525 is a key concept to deploy the universal mission through a hierarchical
body. As the first companions discovered in their deliberations in the sixteenth century,
the bond of obedience is key for the union of the body.526 If at that time the fourth vow
was a way to “achieve greater availability to the divine will and offer the Church better
service,”527 today the authority of Father General is the unique link with the universal
mission and therefore is able to generate common synergies. This is an important point:
only a higher common recognized authority could lead a synergic movement beyond
local particularities. Only the strength of the common mission as part of the same Jesuit
body would be capable of pushing the individual works to respond beyond local
urgencies. This is the role of Father General and the authority of that office as described
by GC 35.
(2) The need for structures: One of the lessons of the research on JRS, the
example of AJAN, and the networks studied by the Social Justice Secretariat, is that
networks require investment of energy, creativity, personnel, financial and infrastructure
resources.528 Counting on the authority of Father General and the established global
priorities is not enough to generate synergies if there are not structures or individuals
525
Arrupe emphasizes here the role of the subordination of the obedience in the Society.
Subordination in the Society is the expression of a government that respect at every level the apostolic plan
elaborated at a superior level. Cfr. Const 206, 662, 668, 791, 821. In Arrupe, “Nuestra respuesta al
desafío,” 78.
526
See “Union of Hearts,” section 1.3.5 of this thesis.
“Since they are so spread out in diverse parts of the world […] the Society can not be preserved or
governed […] unless its members are united among themselves and with their head.” Const 655.
527
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Obedience, 30.
528
Social Justice Secretariat, Networking in the Social Apostolate, 4.
108
responsible for this task. The social apostolate has formulated this need in a motto that
says “no network without a shepherd.”529 The experience with JRS530 and some recent
examples531 teach us that the secretariats are encouraging, supporting, and coordinating
sectors, but they are not the place for leading these complex and supra-sectorial
initiatives.
GC 34 established that the universal mission is discerned by the central
government532 and then the middle structures of governance become the place where the
universal mission should be enacted. Father Kolvenbach had already pointed to these
structures as the locus of the creative tension between a globalized mission and local
realities.533 After GC 35 the conferences of provincials are no longer just instances of
coordination among provinces, but also intermediary structures of Father General’s
authority regarding the universal mission of the Society. The governance structures
become structural generators of mission, conducting apostolic planning and fostering
initiatives towards the universal mission.534 Emphasizing the role of Father General and
the conferences regarding the global mission, the central government and the assistancies
become environments in which the priorities, the structures, and the authority allow the
generation of synergic networks. But this type of network still needs a structure.535 How
to do this?
529
Ibid, 11.
See “An Intentional New Structure,” section 1.5.2 of this thesis.
531
An interesting example is the initiative of JDRAD (Jesuits for Debt Relief and Development)
born at Naples in the 1997 meeting of the social apostolate. As a network focused on Debt Relief issues, it
worked very well during the first three years under the Center of Faith and Justice of Dublin. Once the
Irish provincial wanted to transfer the leadership role to other provinces, no one wanted to take the lead
and the central secretariat understood that it was not its role. The network failed because of a lack of
ownership from the rest of the provinces, as it was known as the “network of the Irish Jesuits.”
532
GC 34, D 21, 28.
533
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, "Corresponsible in service of Christ’s mission," Opening talk of
Father General in the Loyola 2000 meeting of provincials, September 22, 2000.
534
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Governance, 18.
535
Another initiative was the IJND (International Jesuit Network for Development) launched by
the Social Secretariat in 2001 trying to learn from the experience of JDRAD. This time the board was
carefully opened to different provinces and institutions, the network decentralized, and the focus widened
to debt, commerce, governance, peace, etc, but this time, the lack of central structure, leadership and
dedicated staff ended up in inoperability.
530
109
4.3 Jesuit Mission Transnational Network
It is not realistic to propose that I can simply rethink and reshape the institutional
weight of the largest male religious order in the Catholic Church. However, in this thesis
I have given some insights about a possible organizational development according to the
transversal dimension of justice in the Jesuit mission and the growing global
consciousness of the Society of Jesus. The worldwide web of institutions belonging to
the Society of Jesus536 has an enormous capacity as a unique body sharing a common
vision, mission, and identity. What I have called the Jesuit Mission Transnational
Network is a theoretical approach to the universal apostolic body of the Society from the
perspective of its common mission and transnational potentialities. I have been studying
the powerful features of such widespread and focused network. My interpretation is that
our global vocation, the evolution of the Jesuit mission, and the current global context,
are asking us to proceed in this manner: the creation of mission-driven synergic networks
for the renewal of the mission. Taking advantage of their infrastructure, the Jesuits
should develop these types of networks whose objective should be to channel and open
up the potentialities for the global mission already existing in the Jesuit institutions.
4.3.1 The Proposal
What I am proposing is not to create new and powerful transnational apostolic
institutions, but light global platforms to network existing institutions. I have already
outlined the shape of these new networks;537 I am thinking along the lines of new small
nodes linked to the central government (authority), with a specific mission (mandate)538
536
I am talking just about the Jesuit infrastructure because I understand we have in front of us the
main organizational challenge. The openness to partnership with those who share the mission and vision
with us and the consideration of these proposals on the scale of the Ignatian family should be the next step,
but for reasons of clarity I will to restrain the scope of the concept.
537
See the conclusions of the chapter III of this thesis: The experience shows that these new types
of apostolic structures are (1) supra-provincial institutions answering global problems with a clear
mandate, (2) tapping into existing resources and building on continuing initiatives, (3) built over the
official structure of the Society and linked to central government, (4) using the Jesuit interdisciplinary
body and expertise, (5) relying on the mission of the Society of Jesus of faith that does justice, (6) working
within a clear ethical framework, (7) networking with civil society organizations, and (8) working with
Church structures.
538
“It is essential for each network to have a clear purpose and mission on which it can be
evaluated.” Social Justice Secretariat, Networking in the Social Apostolate, 6.
110
and staff (structure)539 but using the infrastructure of the Society as the base for their
operational level. These central nodes would generate synergic networks without
creating competition or polarizing the structure,540 because they would be founded and
motivated by their common strength: the mission of the Society. The solution proposed is
the institutional embodiment of the idea of synergy. These new structures would be
central nodes of the networks, soft structures that I will call central hub-institutions.541
These institutions would never make sense by themselves. Their power does not come
from themselves but in the network to which they belong. They are built up specifically
ad-hoc, created and dissolved in order to fulfill specific missions. They become the
incentive and framework of sense for the rest of the institutions in the apostolic body.
They give to the network a new horizon, a renewed sense of mission, not asking for a
major institutional investment but a collaboration in a common project directly related to
the global mission.
The fluidity of these networks would bring back the institutional dynamism
proper to a mission-oriented Society of Jesus. Given institutional inertia and the
difficulties in reshaping large apostolic works, these new kinds of light and flexible hubinstitutions appear as a new possible and reasonable horizon in which the challenge is not
the institutional weight but the quality of the discernment and apostolic boldness in
proposing and generating new creative answers with the tools the Jesuits already have.
The networks are temporary configurations of synergies among continuing institutions.
They are based on small hub-institutions that are linked to the central government, with
the main objective of fostering synergies among institutions through networking; they
539
“No network without a shepherd”, “Networks take a lot of energy, creativity, work, good will
and prayer to get and keep going. They also take personnel, financial and infrastructure resources.” Social
Justice Secretariat, Networking in the Social Apostolate, 11,4.
540
The experience shows that a simple link among institutions is not enough if there is no one
leading the initiative, but to create a new strong institution or prioritize an existing one generate distrust or
monopolizes possible networks.
541
I am using the term hub-institution to express two dimensions of the idea: (1) they are
institutions with its structure and mission, but at the same time (2) they are connecting multiple other
institutions making them act as a single network.
111
are center nodes experts in generating corporative answers to specific objectives of the
global mission, using the full potentiality of the Jesuit transnationality.542
For example, to start a new Open Jesuit University should not involve creating a
new university but building up a common educational platform to channel our existing
educational resources and efforts at the service of the global mission. To think about a
global answer to the migration problem should not involve the creation of a large new
international institution (as happened with JRS) but a small initiative for channeling the
mission of institutions somehow related with immigration flows through common
synergic platforms (as is happening with Jesuit Migrant Service).543 The scope of the
network will depend on the desired type of synergy and so will the level of linkage with
Jesuit governance structures.
Attending to the specialization of Jesuit institutions, their participation in the
global mission should be accomplished through collaboration in networks to provide
meaning, contextualize, and justify presences and contributions that would not make
sense if they were given individually. This is why JRS is so attractive to the mission of
the Society in a global world. It is a network that unifies and channels the work of other
multiple institutions, renewing its sense of mission. As has been shown here, the idea of
JRS was not to create a large new institution but to generate synergies among already
existing works and agencies on an international scale. Arrupe wanted JRS to be discreet,
using existing resources, maintaining the identity, and not duplicating structures.544 In the
initial idea, JRS had no weight by itself and was fragile and fluid because the
institutional weight and the strength were contributed by other institutions which
benefited themselves from JRS on the level of identity and mission. As Mark Raper
stated, “JRS itself is not so much a separate organization as a kind of worthy parasite.”545
542
Here that means: radically centered on the mission, generating synergic networks, and with an
important dimension of advocacy and public impact. See “Jesuit Transnational Potentialities,” section 3.5
of this thesis.
543
For example, the Jesuit Migrant Service for North America and Central America, specialized
in the immigrant flow from Centro America and Mexico, develop initiatives in the three tracks of
diplomacy: research, formation, social promotion, accompaniment, advocacy, etc. The outcomes of this
network can be followed at http://www.sejemi.org and they would be clearly out of the reach of the
individual institutions by themselves.
544
O’Brien, Op.Cit., 14.
545
Vella, Everybody, 117.
112
I am proposing the creation of more of these “worthy parasites” as opportunities
for channeling the mission of the current institutions towards the global mission as
catalysis for Jesuit identity and corporate meaning. They would be hub-institutions with
clear missions, linked to the authority of Father General, translating the global priorities
into effective mission-driven synergic networks involving the institutions and individuals
required for each type of mission. This complex level of action, basic for effective
operability in the global world, is what the Society surprisingly lacks but which Arrupe
already envisioned as the Jesuit potentiality.546 This will work only if (1) the
collaboration is required for the sake of common universal mission and is recognized as a
global apostolic priority; (2) the creation of the network has the full endorsement of
Father General and the collaboration is suggested from this authority; (3) the global
mission has priority over the local; and (4) the contribution of the local works is
compatible with the development of their own particular mission and does not interfere
with their sustainability.
4.3.2 The Focus
If, as has already been demonstrated, faith and justice is the new governing
principle of the Jesuit mission that emerges as an answer to the sign of the times, it
should shape the organizational model to renew the apostolic dimension of the Society.
The new synergic models of the Society have to show this centrality putting into play
their multiple institutions towards a faith and justice mission. This is not new. Fernando
Franco has identified “faith-justice” as the definition of the Jesuit identity as an apostolic
body in the Church547 and the key direction of our apostolic priorities. I have been
demonstrating how all Jesuit ministries should integrate the promotion of justice into
their mission.548
I think that the novelty here is the direct link between transnationality and work
for justice. GC 32 already concluded its decree on mission with an invitation to a greater
international collaboration in the Society as required by the Jesuit service of faith and the
546
See “The Jesuit Potentiality,” section 1.4 of this thesis.
Fernando Franco, “Faith and Justice” in José García de Castro (Dir), Diccionario de
Espiritualidad Ignaciana (Santander : Mensajero-Sal Terrae, 2007) 877-885, 877.
548
Social Justice Secretariat, “Characteristics of the Social Apostolate,” lxxiii. See also “Justice
and the Society of Jesus,” section 2.1.3 of this thesis.
547
113
promotion of justice.549 My research shows that only institutions with a focus on social
justice can really take advantage of the outlined transnational potentialities. Only social
justice issues can be at the same time (a) a part of the common mission able to vitalize
and animate the network; (b) a motivation strong enough to mobilize social capital and
generate synergies among the networked institutions; and (c) related to a universal
ethical framework to the extent that it is possible to advocate on the international level.
This points toward the idea that the best of our potentialities are used in global apostolic
answers when developed from the integrative principle of justice.550
This can be supported by looking at the experts in religion and globalization
consulted in my second chapter and their emphasis on the “residual matters” as the focus
of the public dimension of the Church.551 Another clear argument is that human
solidarity, social justice, and universal charity552 are the objectives that the Church
establishes as pillars of its public mission of global solidarity. Finally, it is important to
recognize the fact that all the experiments of synergic networks in the Society has been
done in the Social Apostolate553 and systematized and studied by the Social Justice
Secretariat.554 Father Kolvenbach confirmed the social orientation of these new bodies of
agency when, in 2000, he affirmed that through these new networks the Society
549
In this sense, at the end of the Decree “Our Mission Today” there is an interesting set of
recommendations under the title of “Guidelines for Concerted Action” GC 32, D 4, 59-61. The Decree
finishes with a clear recommendation about “the necessary organization of international cooperation within
the Society, as required by our service of faith and promotion of justice” GC 32, D 4, 81.
550
I want to remark that the centrality of justice in these structures is linked with my particular
perspective of public dimension of the mission and the criteria of maximizing the effects of the Jesuit
transnational structure. Jesuit networking as way of proceeding, and even this proposal of transnational
initiatives, could be also interesting tools in order to develop other aspects of the Jesuit mission as dialogue
with the culture, other religions, or even more explicit aspects of evangelization works.
551
See “Globalization and Religion,” section 2.2.1 of this thesis.
552
PP 43-75.
553
We can learn to combine the typically isolated enterprises of "head" and "feet" into an
integrated approach to social reality bringing direct experience, social sciences, philosophy and theology
together. The task is to forge a valid inter-disciplinary approach for the sake of greater justice and the
Jesuit Social Apostolate is perhaps uniquely placed to take the change. Social Justice Secretariat,
“Characteristics of the Social Apostolate,” lvii.
554
The three official documents explicitly talking about networking in the Society have been
initiatives from the Social Justice Secretariat: (1) the document about “Characteristics of the Social
Apostolate” published in number 69 of Promotio Iustitiae has a whole section (3.7) about Cooperation and
Networking; (2) In the number 72 of Promotio Iustitiae there is a first attempt of systematization of Social
Justice Networks (pages 126-135); the most important document regarding Jesuit networking are (3) the
Guidelines for Networking in the Social Area, published by the Social Justice Secretariat in 2003.
114
“exercise[s] [its] commitment against every form of injustice and misery.”555 After
studying these innovative structures, the Social secretariat confirmed that “there is
virtually no serious human concern or suffering which can be excluded from possible
Jesuit networking.”556
The justice of the Kingdom, 557 as the integrative principle of the Jesuit mission,
is now the principle that allows us to answer better the challenges of globalization. My
main argument here is that the common answer as universal body implies the
strengthening of this integrative principle. My proposal is to develop networks
embodying this linkage, social justice oriented networks that expresses, promote, and
generates synergies around the common mission. Through these proposed networks, the
social dimension of every Jesuit ministry would be explicitly renewed, along with the
motivation of the individual Jesuits and collaborators, and they would strengthen Jesuit
identity, sense of mission, and corporate belonging. These are the benefits of these
networks for individual institutions. Arrupe saw it clearly when he emphasized the
benefits for the Society of the commitment to refugees. “Our service, especially among
the poor, has deepened our life of faith, both individually and as a body.”558 Czerny
confirms that a vital social sector contributes intrinsically to the mission of the whole
province and helps it fulfill the whole Society’s commitment to justice.559 Kolvenbach
stressed the importance of JRS not only as an expression of the Jesuit’s concern for the
poor, but also as a “significant step towards our renewal, personal and corporate, in
availability, mobility and universality.”560 This is now the function of these networks.
4.3.3 The Examples
The last section has stated that the Society of Jesus can make a unique
contribution to the global stage if it looks for different foci on global social justice
problems capable of generating constructive synergies within its universal body.
555
Kolvenbach’s Letter on Loyola 2000, 8 December 2000. Quoted in SJS, Networking, 13
Social Justice Secretariat, Networking in the Social Apostolate, 6.
557
“The integrating principle of our mission is the inseparable link between faith and the
promotion of the justice of the kingdom.” GC 34, D 2, 14.
558
GC 34, D 2,1 and GC 35, Draft on Decree on Identity, 15.
559
At the same time, Czerny expresses the difficulties today to imagine or visualize the social
sector. He argues that almost every other apostolic sector but the social one is typified by a traditional
institutional form. Social Justice Secretariat, “Characteristics of the Social Apostolate,” lxxiii.
560
Vella, Everybody, 47.
556
115
Kolvenbach insisted that international or inter-provincial structures work better when
they can focus on a particular work.561 These structures should have a clear mandate;
they should answer a specific problem. Examples of possible focus are: migrants,
refugees, AIDS, ecology, indigenous people, marginalization and exclusion, debt
cancellation, development, human rights, peace building, good governance, and
participation. Each of these are worthy causes. The key is to look for a social justice
issue identifiable with the mission of the Society (usually related with a global apostolic
priority) and engaging the specific contribution of the Society (inter-sectorial and plural
approach, multiple levels of incidence, educational and research perspective).562
Sometimes it could be a wide focus such as AIDS, or refugees, but other times it can be
narrowed into development and multinational corporations in a specific area, or peacebuilding and reconciliation in a particular conflict.
The novelty here is not the focus, but the type of network. The Society of Jesus
needs to develop new patterns of transnational linkage, and these should be synergic
networks that raise Jesuits to a more complex level of apostolic action where the global
mission should take place. The majority of the examples of current Jesuit networks are
based on symbiotic networking among specialists with common concerns or among
similar institutions.563 This type of networking is helpful for the individual institutions
but, as I have demonstrated, does not build up the full capacity of the Jesuit transnational
structure. What I am talking about are mission-driven synergic networks, and there are
some examples of this new type of initiative already occurring in the Society. I will now
detail two of them:
4.3.3.1 Relational Peace Advocacy Network
The Relational Peace Advocacy Network (RPAN) is a pilot peace advocacy
project launched in May 2006 under the umbrella of the Office of Information of the
European Jesuits (OCIPE). I am using it as an example because the project tries to
561
Kolvenbach, Selección de Escritos, 236.
“A Jesuit Network should aim at making a specific contribution of the Society.” Social Justice
Secretariat, Networking in the Social Apostolate, 6.
563
For example: Jesuit Ecology Network, European Jesuit in Social Sciences, Jesuit Companions
in Indigenous Ministries, African Faith and Justice Network, Ignatian Solidarity Network, and Xavier
Network.
562
116
develop a Jesuit-based network for peace advocacy, promoting deep synergies among
Jesuits centers, NGOs, and academic institutions, based on advocacy and sustainable
peace building. 564 RPAN has among its objectives “to build a network focused on the
three main areas of diplomacy (field, political, and research), through network building
with NGOs, social centres, university institutions and capacities, and projects on peace
work and peace advocacy.”565 This project focuses on the good governance aspects of the
exploitation of natural resources in the Congo and the role this could have in the
promotion of peace. It is especially centered in the role of transnational corporations and
possible international regulation. For this, RPAN connects Jesuits centers in Brussels,
Washington, Kinshasa, and Nairobi, with Jesuit NGO like JRS, academic institutions like
the University of Leuven, and other non-Jesuit institutions.
This is a clear example of a multi-track networking based on a central hub
(OCIPE) with staff coordinating the project (one contracted person in Brussels), built on
a “low institutional profile,” 566 over an already existent Jesuit network. To collect people
(people-centred networking), to amplify information, and to build communities of
practice, are among its functions. Based on the mission of the Society,567 supported for
one of the global priorities (Africa), this project takes advantage of the presence of
Jesuits in different spheres of diplomacy, which allows for a personal but global network
of those concerned with justice and peace in the Congo and the Great Lakes region. This
structure allows RPAN to promote advocacy on three continents, addressing issues like
social responsibility for transnational corporations. OCIPE understands the potentiality
of this initiative considering it “as a first step of a broader initiative with a long-term
vision that will be supported by SJS and could tackle other project topics.”
564
Networking promoted by the experience of complexity, diversity, and pluralism regarding the
social issues and the powerlessness of each individual effort, considering cooperation as essential value.
Elías López, Relational Peace Advocacy Networking, unpublished paper, University of Leuven, 20032004, 7.
565
OCIPE, RPAN Project: The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Lakes, Internal
Work Document, 17 October 2006, 1.
566
López, Relational Peace Advocacy Networking, 6.
567
Moved by the Jesuit sense of mission within OCIPE: “Faith doing justice in a European
Context.” OCIPE, RPAN Project, 2.
117
4.3.3.2 Jesuit Commons
Under the initiative of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities
(AJCU)568 and based on the possibilities opened by new technologies, a project called
Jesuit Commons took off in 2007. The possibilities for the Jesuit network to collaborate
in serving the poor through distance learning or knowledge and resource sharing are the
motivation of this emerging project. Jesuit Commons is an initiative to connect Jesuit
institutions from the educational sector with Jesuit social works with the idea of finding
ways to work together using new communication technologies. The opportunities are so
vast that this project that started on the idea of promoting tertiary education in refugee
camps (then called Messina project), now is focused on all types of collaborative
effort.569
This wide network is a perfect example of inter-sectorial linkage, maximizing the
potentialities of the Jesuit infrastructure, building “diverse networks that will cross
geographical and professional boundaries.”570 Inspired by the common mission of
justice,571 the purpose of this project is clearly designed to “serve the world’s poor”
sparking initiatives in this line within the Jesuit network. Built on the transnationality of
the Society of Jesus, Jesuit Commons tries to identify educational-social projects for
widespread replication, tapping the Jesuit network’s enormous resources.
Due to its wide focus, Jesuit Commons understands its structure as a central-hub
with multinational working groups focused on areas of critical need coordinated by one
moderator. The initial staff will be limited to three people. The central office will be
virtual and rely on the AJCU for basic administrative support.
568
The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities supports the 28 Jesuit institutions of higher
learning in the United States (http://www.ajcunet.edu).
569
Examples of working groups are: teacher training in resource constrained settings, higher and
informal education in Africa, sharing library and course materials, etc.
570
Jesuit Commons Strategy, Internal document, January 18, 2008.
571
“Everyone involved in Jesuit works, whether teaching at a research university like Georgetown
or in an impoverished Caracas primary school, shares a common mission: to create a more just world; to
bolster the dignity of those with whom we interact; to inspire colleagues or students to become men and
women who choose to serve other rather than self. Our efforts are inspired by this common sense of
purpose and by the spirituality and worldview of Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuit order.” Jesuit Commons
Strategy.
118
The novelties of these projects, still in their initial stage, are (1) the strong
centrality of the mission and Jesuit identity, (2) the clear inter-sectorial linkage, (3) the
patent dependency on existing resources, and (4) the existence of a staffed light centralhub. The link with the governance structures of the Society is not clear as far as both
projects are under institutions whose scope is clearly smaller than the intended scope of
the network. Following the logic of this research, both projects should depend on Father
General’s authority for the success of the aimed mission.
Again, the potentiality of these global synergies is not in the benefits for the
members of the network, but in the capability of these bridges among sectors and
different institutions to generate a new level of agency able to answer complex
challenges using the existing Jesuit infrastructure.
4.4 Conclusion
There is an urgency to see the Society as being able to move on the universal
level. “For the Society to make an impact on the global level,” said one of the GC 35
delegates, “something like JRS has to happen; something that is more universal where
you have common values, individuals, and experts contributing to a clear issue, to
identify priorities.”572 This chapter is an experiment with concepts to see what this
“something like JRS” could be. In these pages I have analyzed the evolution of the
structural adjustment of a Society of Jesus that has rediscovered its vocation to
universality, with the intention of showing how the dynamism towards a global mission
started by Arrupe 30 years ago is still going on in the governance changes proposed by
the last general congregation.
The opportunities offered by the global context to a transnational body like the
Jesuits are only a small part of the incentive of a challenge that relies mainly on the
Jesuit vocation itself. The Society of Jesus was created to be a united body at the service
of the Church answering universal challenges and reaching “as far as the globe itself.”573
Its infrastructure, vision, methodology, and expertise show this transnational tendency
embedded at the core of the Society of Jesus. To actualize this vocation in our context
572
573
José Magadía, Interview during the GC35.
Epistolae et Monumenta P. H. Nadal (MonNad) V, 773-774 cited in O’Malley, “To Travel,” 8.
119
necessarily means to act on a level of complexity only attainable through global
synergies. A mission answering to global challenges is not at hand for Jesuit institutions
individually but is so corporately. The governance decree of GC 35 gave the Jesuits
many tools to improve this organic dynamism.
That is to say that for the Jesuits to be loyal to their vocation they should not only
organize and coordinate their widespread network of institutions, but also should
generate new levels of mission through what I have called synergic networking. JRS has
been a prophetic example of this. Following the lessons learned in previous chapters, the
Jesuit way of global networking should be: (a) radically oriented towards the common
mission of Faith and Justice beyond the particular interest of institutions; (b) linked with
the Jesuit governance structures endorsed by the authority of Father General; (c)
embodied in small hub-institutions but using the multiple and varied existing resources
within the Jesuit apostolic body; and (d) open to partnership with Church and other civil
society organizations. What I have called the Jesuit Mission Transnational Network is
just a theoretical approach to the universal apostolic body of the Society from the
perspective of its common mission and transnational potentialities.
If the global mission formulated in apostolic priorities would be enacted through
this type of network, it will bring about (as JRS did in its moment) a “significant step
towards our renewal, personal and corporate, in availability, mobility and
universality.”574 As far as these light new structures allow fluid temporary configurations
and multiple belongings for the current institutions, the Society would recover its internal
dynamic freedom and its radical orientation toward mission. With the help of these
structures, apostolic discernment could be free of historical institutional burdens, and the
Society could improve its creative, bold, flexible, and even risky apostolic commitment.
The renewed sense of universal mission would permeate the Jesuit structure aiding the
corporate cohesion of the apostolic body.
574
Vella, Everybody, 47.
120
Chapter V. Final Conclusions
All of this is to say that the universal vocation of the Society of Jesus should be
actualized today by renewing the sense of global mission and by using the strength of its
transnational structure. The Jesuit Refugee Service is an example of this new type of
agency for a public presence of the Society in a globalized world. These pages are about
JRS as a challenge to the Jesuit apostolic structures so that the structures may embody
their intrinsic universal vocation, actualize their public mission, and do their best in our
global context. This thesis emphasizes the current potentiality of the Society to make this
finally happen. I started the thesis talking about the impression that my JRS experience
made on me. During the development of these pages, I finally understood that what
impresses me, and many others, about JRS is its radical orientation towards mission. As
a Jesuit I find myself delighted with a mission-oriented institution with flexibility,
mobility, and real apostolic dynamism. In JRS, the strength of the “mystic” and the
centrality of the mission are translated into real apostolic discernments and a corporate
sense of body, lived as an open community on mission.
Everyone related to the Society of Jesus would recognize in these JRS features a
sense of genuine Jesuit mission. This is probably the source of my enthusiasm and why I
have been focused not in JRS’s aspects as a refugee initiative but in its dimension as a
new way of actualizing the Society of Jesus. This thesis has been focused on the
structural dimensions of JRS, as an institution trying to express, according to the signs of
the times, what I think is Arrupe’s inheritance from the universal and global vision of
Ignatius and the first companions. The originality of the research relies on the focus on
the structures. I defend that the global vision and universal scope of the mission of the
Society make the structural dimension a key criteria to discern the apostolic mission.
The research led me towards the groundbreaking institutional dimension of the
initiative. I have demonstrated that Arrupe’s intuition to launch JRS was not just
motivated by the refugee crisis but also by the complexity and broad dimensions of the
problem and the suitability of the Jesuit vision and infrastructure to offer a global and
adequate response. The refugee crisis deeply moved Arrupe’s heart and it aroused his
121
awareness of the need for a new level of concerted action for which the Society of Jesus
was particularly well fitted.
These pages have shown how the creation of JRS is part of a larger framework
started by GC 31 and animated by Arrupe’s charismatic leadership. The formulation of
global priorities and the creation of the apostolic secretariats are also part of the same
plan: the renewal of the apostolic dynamism of the Society of Jesus through a
revitalization of the universal dimension of the Jesuit mission. JRS is more than a work
of mercy; it is an innovative global apostolic response from the whole Society.
In this sense, I have framed the case study as part of a wider trend towards new
ways of Jesuit agency in which three interrelated variables come into play: (a) the
challenges and opportunities of the global context which trigger the undeniable potential
of transnational institutions; (b) the evolution of the concept of mission in the Church
and the Society which led to a new concept of public mission grounded in an integrative
principle of justice; and (c) the original vocation of the Society of Jesus that bears
intrinsic universal tendencies.
Within this framework JRS becomes a pioneer initiative that merges the
integrative principle of justice proper to the modern Jesuit mission and the progressive
awareness of the universal scope of that mission. In this context, the study of the
institutional progression of JRS becomes an example of an evolution of the structural
adjustment of a Society of Jesus that has rediscovered its vocation to universality. Some
consequences of the research are:
(1) There is an intrinsic link between mission and apostolic structures, especially
in a Society of Jesus essentially oriented to the mission. The studied evolution of the
apostolic structures is an effect of the Society’s adjustment to a new comprehensive
understanding of mission.
(2) Already present in the foundational documents of JRS, the argument of the
“structural suitability” of the Society has been largely ignored. However my study shows
how it was an important part of the argumentation used by Arrupe to launch JRS.
(3) The focus and the scope of the mission are key dimensions for defining
apostolic structures. JRS’s evolution is a perfect example of focus that requires a global
122
approach, and mission that needs wider structures. JRS’s dilemmas point toward the need
for Jesuit structures to adapt to supra-provincial missions.
(4) The friction between JRS and the regular structures of the Society are a
consequence of the process of the adaptation of the Jesuits to a renewed sense of global
mission. The study of the governance dilemma has highlighted the importance of the
authority of the Father General and the intermediary governance structures regarding the
universality of the mission.
My intention has been to show that JRS is just the first example of how the
Jesuits are modernizing and globalizing their public mission, trying to deploy their
agency through global networks of solidarity. JRS’s conviction as a global apostolic
work called to act through the Jesuit body allows me to extrapolate some of its features
as a model for universal apostolic structures. Comparing JRS to the younger networked
initiative AJAN, experience shows that these new structures are (1) supra-provincial
institutions answering global problems with clear mandates, (2) tapping into existing
resources and building on continuing initiatives, (3) built over the official structure of the
Society and linked to central government, (4) using the Jesuit interdisciplinary body and
expertise, (5) relying on the mission of the Society of Jesus of faith that does justice, (6)
working within a clear ethical framework, (7) networking with civil society
organizations, and (8) working with Church structures.
The use of the model of transnational religious institutions has helped me to
highlight three main potentialities of these new transnational structures: (1) the strong
orientation towards a common mission, (2) the powerful structural capacities in terms of
wide scope and interdisciplinary body, and (3) the possibilities of these structures
regarding advocacy and public impact. These theoretical highlights perfectly match with
JRS’s strengths and confirm that it is a successful institution because (a) it is built over
the potentialities of its transnational structure while (b) it is actualizing the most pure
dimensions of a genuine Jesuit mission. All this is to say that the vision of Arrupe
worked so well, not just because of the Jesuit orientation, but also because its structure
makes it a capable agent in our globalized world and its way of proceeding takes
advantage of its transnational strengths.
123
A quick glimpse at the Society is enough to show that the Jesuits do not lack
resources or vision, but do have a serious problem of implementation. Given the current
worldwide network of institutions sharing vision, mission, and vast expertise, my
proposal is that the Jesuits should go further in the embodiment of their universal
vocation by developing global apostolic solutions as a unified body. For this, they must
(a) renew their sense of global mission and (b) maximize the effects of their apostolic
structures using the strengths of transnational networks. The thesis shows how both
objectives are parts of the same movement; that is to say, that in renewing their original
calling the Jesuits will activate the remarkable potential of their apostolic body with
tremendous implications in their ability to act in a global context. For the Jesuits to be
loyal to their vocation they should not just organize and coordinate their widespread
network of institutions, but also generate new higher levels of mission: to actualize the
universal vocation in our context necessarily means to act on a level of complexity only
reachable through global synergies. The Jesuit Mission Transnational Network is a
theoretical approach to the universal apostolic body of the Society that follows this
perspective of a common global mission and its transnational potentialities:
(1) This Jesuit way of “going global” should be implemented through synergic
networking, beyond a symbiotic relationship among institutions. It should propose,
channel, and coordinate wider scopes of agency beyond the usual reach and influence of
existing institutions. This implies the involvement of Father General’s authority and the
middle structures of governance.
(2) These goals require the development of networks radically oriented towards
the common mission of Faith and Justice and linked with the Jesuit governance
structures endorsed by the authority of Father General. They should be led by small hubinstitutions, acting as “worthy parasites,”575 using the multiple and varied existing
resources within the Jesuit apostolic body.
(3) Through these concerted apostolic actions towards the common mission, the
Jesuits will be able to act at the global level, as they were created to do, as their
infrastructure allows them and as the challenges of the times require.
575
Expression used by Mark Raper referring to the fact that JRS is not so much a separate
organization as “a kind of worthy parasite.”
124
(4) In so far as these new networks are light apostolic bodies which allow fluid
temporary configurations and multiple belongings for the current institutions, the Society
would recover its internal dynamic freedom and its radical orientation toward mission
without unrealistic changes in its traditional institutional weights.
In summary, these pages seek to encourage the creation of global and regional
networks based on a genuine Jesuit networking, enabling the Society of Jesus to address
global concerns which are out of the hands of individual works and province structures.
The Society of Jesus can make a unique contribution to the global stage if it looks for
different points of focus regarding global social justice problems capable of generating
constructive synergies within its body. I have described the ongoing developments in the
Society in terms of global cooperation and networking, as well as demonstrating how
after GC 35 the Society is better equipped to embody these kinds of structures. The
Jesuits are called to “glocalize” 576 their mission through this type of organizational
challenge. The direction indicated by these developments allows the Jesuit global
vocation to affect, transform, and raise up local apostolic planning. The tension between
insertion and mobility (particularities and universality), intrinsically part of the Jesuit
vocation, is the apostolic tension of today’s Jesuit creative fidelity. That means that at
present the traditional Jesuit apostolic boldness577 should be directed toward the current
frontiers between the global mission and the local work. This thesis is a reminder of the
importance of not losing sight of the structural effects of these new formulations of the
Jesuit mission. Today, more than ever, the Jesuits are required to work locally but
keeping “always in view the greater service of God and the universal good,”578 acting “as
a universal body with a universal mission, realizing, at the same time, the radical
576
Sanks, Op.Cit. 636. This term is used in business to express how a global product is adapted to
fit the local particularities of each region. In social sciences it describes an active process of negotiation
between the local and the global. Sanks apply the term to theology with the idea of developing a process of
dialogue in which there is a global influence that is altered by local culture and returns into the global in a
constant cycle. Robertson is the pioneer on this dialogical-oriented vision of Globalization. Schreiter is
using Roberston and Beyer for his theological proposal.
577
“ For us, frontiers and boundaries are not obstacles or ends, but new challenges to be faced,
new opportunities to be welcomed. Indeed, ours is a holy boldness, 'a certain apostolic aggressivity,'
typical of our way of proceeding"” Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, "Corresponsible in service of Christ’s
mission," Opening talk of Father General in the Loyola 2000 meeting of provincials, September 22, 2000.
578
Const 623, 650.
125
diversity of [their] situations.”579 The Jesuit Mission Transnational Network is an
example of what this horizon could look like. It follows the insights of Arrupe and the
JRS experience as the first institutional attempt at the modern embodiment of the global
vocation of the Society of Jesus.
A.M.D.G.
579
GC 35, Draft of Decree on Identity, 20.
126
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