Fr General addresses the World Union of Jesuit Alumni
On 31 July 1956 – at a meeting commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of St Ignatius of Loyola – a group of Jesuit alumni created a charter for an organization with the purpose of helping alumni of Jesuit institutions to match their actions with those of the Society of Jesus. Over the following decades, the nascent idea grew in fits and spurts, gradually becoming what we know today as the “World Union of Jesuit Alumni”, or WUJA, an organization that brings together former students of Jesuit schools and universities from across the world who are united in their vision for the future of Jesuit institutions.
Today in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Fr General Arturo Sosa, SJ, stood in front of an assembly of those alumni and alumnae and delivered an impassioned address to spark discussion and discernment within WUJA. He invited them to seek the opportunity to make the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius in one of the many forms in which they are offered everywhere today.
Emphasizing the importance of being “United in Spirit” and “Leading with Purpose”, Fr General challenged the alumni to dream big – to move beyond nostalgia into a future guided by the Universal Apostolic Preferences: the mission given to the Jesuits by Pope Francis in 2019. He bracketed that challenge by the one issued by Pope Leo XIV during his exhortation at last year’s Major Superior Meeting in Rome – to constantly be a Society of Jesus “at the frontiers”. He then asked WUJA to work with the Society, as partners in mission, to address such hotbed issues as AI, promoting the common good, listening to the youth, and protecting human dignity in an era that reduces them to data and efficiency metrics.
Fr General ended his address with an appeal for WUJA to work, hand-in-hand, with Jesuits and Jesuit ministries around the world as they work to bring people of good will together from across political, geographical, and ethnic boundaries to form “Men and Women for others”. With calls for collaboration, synodality and companionship, Fr General has made it clear to the alumni and alumnae of WUJA that a call to mission has been made – and he has challenged them to answer today as they always have in the past.
