Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. (November 14, 1907 - February 5, 1991) was the twenty-eight Superior General (1965-83) of the Society of Jesus. He was born in Bilbao, Spain.

Pedro Arrupe attended school at the Santiago Apostol College in Bilbao. Later he would move to Madrid to attend the Medical School of the Universidad Complutense. There he met Severo Ochoa, who would win the Nobel Prize for Medicine. One of his teachers was Juan Negrin, a pioneer in physiology, who would become Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic during the Civil war.

Fr. Arrupe was working as a missionary in Japan when war broke out with the United States and the Allies. While the Attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7th in Hawaii, in Japan it was already December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and Arrupe was saying mass when he was arrested and imprisoned for a time. His attitude of profound prayer (he would later describe it as one of his most transforming spiritual periods), his lack of offensive behaviour gained him the respect of his jailors and judges, and was set free in a month. He was appointed Jesuit superior and the master of novices in Japan in 1942. He was living in suburban Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell in August of 1945. As a trained doctor he headed the first rescue party to arrive in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. He described that event as:

 "a permanent experience outside of history, engraved on my memory."

 He utilized his medical skills in the service of the wounded and the dying, transforming the novitiate into a make-shift hospital for over 200 grievously scarred human remnants. He eventually was appointed the first Jesuit provincial for Japan (1958-65).

 

At the thirty-first General Congregation (GC XXXI) of the Society of Jesus in 1965, he was elected the order's twenty-eighth Father General. He served in that position from 1965 to 1983. Father Vinnie O'Keefe, who was a great friend of Arrupe's as well as one of his top advisers, says Arrupe was,

"a second Ignatius, a refounder of the Society in the light of Vatican II."

The defining moment of Fr. Arrupe's leadership of the Jesuits was probably the thirty-second General Congregation (GC XXXII), which he called in 1975.

Arrupe's dream was crystallized in the document (decree 4), Our Mission Today: the Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice. Of GC XXXII. This decree basically defined all the Jesuits work as having an essential focus on the promotion of Justice as well as the Catholic Faith.

Arrupe died at the Curia on February 5, 1991 in his 84th year. His Generalate actually lasted for 18 years from his election until his resignation in 1983, though he lived another eight years of complete inactivity paralyzed and with little communication.(Source: Wikipedia)