A young Spanish Jesuit is missioned to Japan where he experiences events that will affect the rest of his life.
This animated short film “Arrupe in Japan” is a collaboration between the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific and the Digital Arts and Computer Animation Department of the Ateneo de Naga and Elisabeth University of Music. It takes a look at the early years of Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ, former Jesuit Superior General, when he was a young man in pre-World War II Japan. In 1945, when he was the Master of Novices in Nagatsuka a mere six kilometers outside of Hiroshima, he experienced the onslaught of the atomic bomb dropped by an American warplane over the city. With his medical knowledge Fr Arrupe helped victims who flocked to their house. One young man whose wounds were treated by Fr Arrupe would survive his injuries and later on become a priest himself.
Today, 78 years after the bombing of Hiroshima, Fr Arrupe’s light shines ever bright. His words about being men and women for others still resonate five decades after he shared them in Valencia, Spain when he addressed a gathering of Jesuit alumni. Fr Arrupe was certainly himself a man for others—not only in Japan where he was side by side with the Japanese people during one of the most difficult moments of history—but also throughout his entire life.
The cause for Fr Pedro Arrupe’s beatification and canonisation was opened in February 2019.
