Please join us for Sunday Service at 10 am.  You are all invited to stay for coffee after the service.

This is a sneak peek at what the message will be for Sunday

Marlene’s Rev. Notes

This Sunday, we will be colouring outside the lines as our “saint” is not yet a “saint”! He is a saint in process. The sainthood cause for Father Pedro Arrupe was formally opened in Rome in 2019. I found this man’s life so interesting that I decided to include it anyway.

Pedro Arrupe is considered the “second founder” of the Jesuits. He was born in the Spanish Basque city of Bilbao in 1907 and died in 1991. He started medical school in Madrid in 1923. But after witnessing miraculous healings at Lourdes as a summer medical intern, he entered the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) four years later. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain in 1932, he continued his education in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States.

After ordination, he was sent to Japan in 1938. Father Arrupe was serving in a Japanese mission in Nagatsuka, just outside Hiroshima, when the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. The Jesuit priest, who studied medicine before entering the Society, and his novitiates, were able to give aid to 150 victims. Knowing nothing of the dangers of atomic radiation, they were perplexed and distressed at the many deaths of people who seemed to have no injuries. Arrupe and his fellow Jesuits had only the most basic food and medical supplies. They had to care for people without anesthetics or modern drugs. Nevertheless, of those they were able to take in, only one died.

 Arrupe said once that love of God must necessarily bear fruit in love of neighbour and in works of justice. During his life, he also established the Jesuit refugee service, which today serves refugees and other forcibly displaced persons in 52 countries.