EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

of moral ambiguity allowing volunteers to serve the interests of refugees
only at the cost of also serving the more calculating and less
benign interests of political, commercial and military players in the
same refugee drama. I wish to encourage those of you who are members
of the JRS teams in the field to continue this important effort at
constant discernment in the midst of the many tasks claiming your
energy and attention, for your fellowship with Christ is the source of
the hope you share with the refugees.
What remains to be done
1. Service to refugees: an apostolate of the whole Society
At the outset, Fr Arrupe intended the Refugee Service to be a
network of contacts primarily within the Society in order to plan
and co-ordinate our work in this field, to collect information that
might lead to new opportunities for assistance to refugees, to act as
a switchboard between offers of help from our Provinces and the
needs of international organisations, to conscientise the Society about
the importance of this apostolate and the different forms it can
take both within countries of first asylum and receiving countries,
to direct the special attention of the Society towards those groups
or areas that receive little publicity or help from elsewhere, and to
encourage our publications and institutes of learning to undertake
research into the root causes of the refugee problem so that preventive
action may be taken.
But above all, Fr Arrupe wanted this work to be carried out
through Jesuits in the Provinces: I shall be counting largely on you, he
wrote to the Provincials in 1980, and members of your Province to support
and help this side of its work (Acta Romana, XVIII, 1, p. 321). Looking back
we must admit that our Refugee Service has, inevitably perhaps, given
the difficulties and complexities of this work, grown into an apostolate
somewhat apart from the mainstream activities of the Society.
The initial growth of JRS and its present identity may have given
the impression that the service to refugees is the responsibility of a
small group of specialists with a particular calling for this ministry.
I wish to stress that this is not so. Our service to refugees is an
apostolic commitment of the whole Society, and in particular of
those Provinces where the refugees come from, where they seek protection
and first refuge, and where they finally settle.
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