VATICAN-JAPAN The years in Japan, the beatification process of Father Arrupe continues

At the closing ceremony of the diocesan phase of the beatification process of the Spanish religious who led the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983, his 27 years of mission between Tokyo and Hiroshima were remembered. Along with his love for the Japanese people and culture and his heroic service among the thousands injured in the atomic bomb explosion on August 6, 1945.

Rome () – A missionary who deeply loved the Japanese people, serving them even in their most dramatic hour, with his closeness to the victims of the first atomic bombing in Hiroshima in 1945. Archbishop Baldo Reina, vicar of the Pope for the diocese of Rome , today wanted to expressly remember this aspect of the life of Father Pedro Arrupe (1907-1991) during the closing of the diocesan phase of the beatification process of the Spanish Jesuit who from 1965 to 1983 was the 28th superior general of the Society of Jesus. “A man faithful and obedient to the Church and a brave prophet of conciliar renewal,” said Bishop Reina during the session of the diocesan tribunal that officially handed over to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints the material gathered in the investigation into the sanctity of the life and work of this important figure of the Church of the 20th century.

Today’s ceremony – which took place in the presence of the current Superior General, Fr. Arturo Sosa – took place on the same day that Fr. Arrupe was born in Bilbao in 1907. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1927 and had insistently requested being assigned as a missionary to Japan, a land where he later exercised his ministry for 27 years. He arrived there in 1938 and initially served in Tokyo, in the parish of Yamaguchi, in an area personally evangelized by Saint Francis Xavier. When Japan entered World War II he was arrested and interrogated as a foreigner. Then, in 1942, he was assigned to Nagatsuka, the Jesuit novitiate in Hiroshima of which he became vice-rector. In this city of Japan he made his solemn profession on February 2, 1943. And in that same house on the outskirts of Hiroshima, Fr. Arrupe was a first-hand witness to the American atomic bombing on the morning of August 6, 1945.

“I was in my room with another priest when suddenly we saw a blinding light, like a magnesium lightning bolt,” he writes in your memories of that dramatic day -. When I opened the door that led to the city, we heard a tremendous explosion, similar to the blast of a hurricane. At the same time, doors, windows and walls fell on us in pieces and we were thrown to the ground.”

“I will never forget – Fr. Arrupe continued – my first vision of what was the result of the atomic bomb: a group of young women, eighteen or twenty years old, hugging each other as they crawled along the street. One of them had a wound that covered almost her entire chest; He had burns on half his face and a cut on his scalp probably caused by a falling tile, while a large amount of blood ran freely down his face. The procession continued to grow and reached about 150,000 people. This was the horror of Hiroshima. …We did the only thing that could be done in the presence of such a mass slaughter: we knelt and prayed for guidance, because we were deprived of any human help.”

Under these circumstances, the Jesuit worked hard to organize a field hospital within the novitiate itself, which was located outside the area most directly affected by the explosion. Before entering the Society of Jesus he had studied medicine in Spain; So he himself began to care for 200 patients with the little they had at their disposal.

In 1958, when the Jesuits established the Province of Japan, Fr. Arrupe became its first superior, a position he held until he was elected superior general in 1965. “His entire mission in Japan – Bishop Reina recalled today in Rome – It was a long stage of his life, in which he made the best of himself available. “His only point of reference was his encounter with the language, customs, courtesy and way of thinking and feeling of the Japanese.”