The Birth of
the Social Secretariat
Francisco Ivern SJ
t the end of 1948, when I was still a youthful 19 years of age,
my superiors sent me to India to do my studies in philosophy. In 1952 I
left India and didn’t return there till ten years later, in 1962, after I had
obtained my licentiate in social sciences at the Gregorian University in Rome,
completed my master’s and doctoral degrees in Social and Political Sciences in
the University of Louvain, Belgium, and also finished my theological studies in
Toronto, Canada. In 1962, upon returning to India, I joined the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, which was the Society’s inter-provincial
social centre in that country. From 1966 to 1968 I carried out a study on
Church activities in the social and health fields in the region of Chotanagpur,
Bihar. In 1968 we received the visit of Fr.
Arrupe in Ranchi, at the heart of Chotanagpur. I say “we
received” because he came to visit the office where I was working, along with a
team of ten other researchers. On that occasion Fr. Arrupe, whom I already knew
personally since I had met him in Rome in 1965 shortly before his election as
general, invited me to go to Rome and set up in our General Curia a secretariat
for promoting the social apostolate in the whole Society. The next year, 1969,
I moved to Rome. Since the offices on the Via dei
Penitenzieri were under construction, I set up the Secretariat in two empty
rooms on the first floor of the main building of Borgo Santo Spirito, beside
the library and almost directly above the Jesuit Guest Bureau. The two rooms
were literally empty, having no furniture or equipment of any kind. I had to
buy everything with a $10,000 donation I received. Later on we moved to the new
offices on the Via dei Penitenzieri, where the Secretariat is now located.
The decade of the 60s was still the decade
of “development”. In the Church, however, and above all within the Society,
there was already some talk of the promotion of justice as a requirement of
faith, but such language was still not common. As a result, the Secretariat was
born with the name JESEDES, an acronym for Jesuit Secretariat for Social and
Economic Development. The bulletin we published at that time also bore the same
name. Naturally we were concerned with the kind of development that gave
priority to the most needy persons and that was
“integral” at both the individual and collective levels. That is to say, it was
development that developed “the whole man and all men”, as Paul VI proposed in
his encyclical of March, 1967, Populorum Progressio. That concept of
integral development, which would later be called sustainable development,
began to expand and take on substance.
At the end of the 60s, however, and above
all in Latin America, the influence of liberation theology, which was gaining
ground, and the growth of the “Christians for Socialism” movement, which
included several Jesuits, opened up new perspectives. There began to be open
discussion of the need for structural changes to eliminate the oppressive
conditions that were affecting the poor majorities of that continent. Some were
advocating an at least limited use of a Marxist analysis of reality. Years
later Fr. Arrupe sent a later to all Jesuits on this topic. Others were
speaking of the need for a revolution, but for a revolution “in freedom”. These words appeared on the cover of one of our journals, and even
though the discussion was about a revolution “in freedom”, such expressions did
not fail to provoke strong reactions in the more conservative strata of the
Church – and also of the Society, though to a lesser degree. They were
difficult times, with many tensions.
Immediately prior to GC32, in 1975, there
were about a dozen social centres in Latin America, known as CIAS (Spanish acronym for Center of Social Research and Action). They were all actively
flourishing, with more than a hundred people, Jesuit and lay, working in them.
Another hundred Jesuits were being trained in the field of economic, political
and social sciences in order to reinforce those centres. The well-known Decree
4 of that Congregation defined “Our Mission Today” in terms of “the service of
faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement”. That
decree opened up new horizons and buttressed the hope and the commitment of the
many Jesuits involved in the struggle for a better world; at the same time the
decree aggravated the already existing tensions, both within the Society and
outside it. In some countries those tensions produced open conflicts within the
Society itself, among Jesuits and Jesuit institutions, especially between the
social and the educational sectors.
Decree 4 had solid theological foundations
and could cite in its favour the Church’s magisterium of the years preceding
GC32: not only the magisterium of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), but
also that of the Episcopal Synods of 1971 (on justice in the world) and of 1975
(on evangelization of the contemporary world). The language of the decree,
however, was still not very nuanced, and in some ways even a little one-sided.
Furthermore, there was lacking a gradual, pastoral “translation” or
“application” of the decree, which would enable its teachings to be integrated
into the concrete, heterogeneous reality of the Society on the different
continents. We had to wait for GC33 and GC34 to clear up some of the
misunderstandings and correct some of the erroneous interpretations which
Decree 4 inadvertently provoked.
The years that
followed GC32 were dynamic and hopeful, and at the same time very painful. We lost many brothers, especially in our
social centres (CIAS) in Latin
America. A fair
number of Jesuits were discouraged when they realized that, both within the
Society and outside, the social changes for which they
were striving were not coming about as quickly or as effectively as they had
hoped. There were numerous conflicts with the hierarchy, provoked at times by
our own impulsiveness and imprudence, but deriving also very often from a lack
of understanding on the part of members of the hierarchy who had still not assimilated
either the spirit or the letter of Vatican II, nor that of the Synods that
followed.
In any case, the name we gave the
Secretariat in 1969, JESEDES, no longer corresponded to this new reality, which
could not be expressed purely in terms of development, not even “integral”
development. We had to speak now of social justice and the structural changes
necessary to make justice ever more a reality. The Secretariat began to be
known simply as the Social Secretariat of the Society, and its bulletin was no
longer called JESEDES, but Promotio Iustitiae.
That change of name and orientation became
effective at the end of GC32, when Fr. Michael Campbell-Johnston was appointed
to head the Secretariat. A few months after GC32 I was named
by Fr. Arrupe as one of his six General Counsellors. Although as a
General Counsellor I continued still to be responsible for the Social
Secretariat, I could not attend fully to the growing number of requests for aid
that were reaching us. It was necessary that someone else assume the
responsibility of administering the Secretariat. In July 1975 I went to British
Guyana to interview Fr. Michael in order to get to know him better and to see
if he would be willing to go to Rome and assume that responsibility. He seemed
to me to be the ideal person for the job. Some years before that he had founded
in Georgetown a social centre called GISRA (Guyana
Institute for Social Research and Action). It was not easy for him to leave Guyana and move to Rome, but his arrival in Rome was a blessing for the social apostolate
of the Society.
As General Counsellor I continued to be
Father General’s advisor regarding social questions, among other
responsibilities, and I still had the ultimate responsibility for the Social
Secretariat. In fact, my office and Fr. Michael’s were practically side by
side, separated only by our secretary’s office, but he was the person who was
really running the Secretariat. He was a great communicator and gave new life
to the bulletin Promotio Iustitiae; he contributed much to promote the
social apostolate in the Society during the years when he headed up the
Secretariat.
I spent eleven years in our Curia in Rome, six of them directing the Social
Secretariat which Fr. Arrupe had asked me to set up. They were enriching years,
full of challenges. They were years of change both within the Church and
without. Despite the inevitable misunderstandings and tensions, the social
dimension permeated ever more deeply the works and institutions of the Society.
The Social Secretariat constituted a point of reference for the Society, and it
provided a forum where Jesuits working in the social area could share their
ideas and experiences. During those years we created an international
commission that was composed of Jesuits of all the continents and met
periodically. Its aim was to advise Father General regarding the social
apostolate and to provide us with guidelines to orient our work in the
Secretariat.
As Director of the Secretariat and also as
General Counsellor, I had a chance to learn about the activities of the Society
in the different continents; above all, I had the opportunity to know
personally so many of the marvellous Jesuits who dedicated themselves heart and
soul to the social apostolate. For some of them their commitment to social
causes cost them their lives. During all these years it was Pedro Arrupe who
inspired us all, and he inspired me personally and
gave me strength to continue forward. He too, however, ended up paying a price
for his daring decisions and his prophetic vision – there were many people who
were still not prepared for them. Like every person, like all of us, Arrupe
could not help but have his limitations, and we who worked closely with him
could not help but be aware of them. Thinking about those years, though, such
limitations vanish from sight. Today Pedro Arrupe appears as the prophetic
figure he always was, a man who inspired so many people, both inside the
Society and beyond it. The idea of the Social Secretariat arose out of his
initiative, just as some years later he would decide to create the Jesuit
Refugee Service. It is impossible to think of the social apostolate in the
Society without thinking of Pedro Arrupe.
Francisco Ivern SJ
Pontifícia
Universidade Católica
Rua Marquês de S.
Vicente, 225
22453-900 Rio de
Janeiro, RJ – BRAZIL
<fivern@puc-rio.br>
Original Spanish
Translation by Joseph Owens
SJ
