---

Meet the Arrupe Scholars Listen to our students (To Listen: Click on each arrow/play button or click on the link. Use of pause is available too.)
	Arrupe Scholar - Jenna	WJU Arrupe Scholar - Renee (playing)

The Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ Scholarship is a service and leadership program designed to challege students to become leaders on campus and in the community. Arrupe Scholars are taught the skills to lead reflection, engage in advocacy work, student leaders on service immersion trips and coordinate local service projects. Arrupe Scholars complete a minimum of 66 hours of service per school year, primarily at one site in the Wheeling area. Students engage in monthly reflection activities regarding their service work in the community and students participate in an end of the year service immersion week except for seniors. Senior Arrupe Scholars participate in a winter break service trip to El Salvador as their capstone experience. As "men and women for others" Arrupe Scholars are asked to be leaders in service and academics, leaders on campus and in the community, and leaders in solidarity and Ignatian spirituality.

Father Pedro Arrupe (1907-1991)
28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus (1965-1983)

As a scholar, doctor, and priest, Father Pedro Arrupe was a champion for service to others and justice for all. Like St. Igantius of Loyola, Fr. Arrupe was a native of the rugged Basque country of Northern Spain, on Nov. 14th, 1907. Originially, Fr. Arrupe was preparing for a careerin medicine when he decided to become a Jesuit priest. In 1927, he interrupted his medical studies at the University of Madrid to join the Jesuits. He later resumed his doctoral studies in the United States, where, in 1936, he was ordained.

In 1938, Father Arrupe went to Japan, serving as a missionary for the next 27 years. As the director for a group of Jesuit novices he was living in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell in 1945. As a physician of both body and soul he led the first rescue party to enter the devastation, building a makeshift hospital and utilizing his medical skills to serve the wounded and the dying. To him, this was “a permanent experience outside of history, engraved on my memory.” Nonetheless his words and deeds afterwards were full of Christian optimism, firmly rooted in the life-affirming presence of the Risen Lord. He later was appointed as the first Jesuit provincial superior in Japan.

Pedro Arrupe, elected Superior General of the Society of Jesus in 1965, is frequently referred to as the seond founder of the Society of Jesus because of the charismatic leadership he provided for the order and for other religious communities in the challenging years of Church renewal after the Second Vatican Council. Due to failing health, Father Arrupe resigned his position in 1983. To the end of his life, he continued to inspire his fellow Jesuits and all he met with his courage and peaceful surrender to God's ways. Fr. Arrupe passed away in Rome on February 5, 1991.

Some Foundational Beliefs in the Life and Ministry of Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ: - We can "find God in all things," especially in service to our brothers and sisters in need. - Our Christian faith calls us not only to perform act of charity, but also to work for true justice and the systemic alleviation of the causes of poverty, hunger, racism, war. - By responding to the real needs of real persons, we can bring hope to those who know no hope, bring love into the lives that have never known love, and make people feel wanted, needed, and valued. In this way, service is "humanizing," as it restores human dignity. - The prime objective of Jesuit education is the formation of "men and women for others:" "Men and women who will live not for themselves, who cannot even conceive of a love of God which does not include a love for the least of their neighbors, and who are completely convinced that a love og God which does not result in justice for all is a farce."