EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

Introduction
...Struck and shocked by the plight of thousands of boat people and refugees,
I felt it my duty to send cable messages to some 20 Major Superiors
around the world. Sharing my distress with them, I asked what they in
their countries and the universal Society could do to bring at least some
relief to such a tragic situation...
Fr Pedro Arrupe’s letter, The Society of Jesus and the Refugee Problem,
14 November 1980
The perilous journeys to exile of the Vietnamese boat people deeply
moved Fr Pedro Arrupe. Although the Vietnam War ended in 1975, it
was not until 1979 that great numbers of people began to leave the
country, most making clandestine, risky journeys at sea. Fr Arrupe,
then General of the Society of Jesus, appealed to some Jesuit
Provincials for practical assistance. The spontaneous and generous
‘first wave of action’ provoked him to reflect on how much more the
Society could do if its responses to this, and other contemporary
crises of forced human displacement, were planned and coordinated.
From that initial sentiment has grown a world wide service to
forcibly displaced people. On 14 November 1980, Fr Arrupe announced
the birth of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). Coincidentally,
it was his own birthday too. It is also the feast of the saintly Joseph
Pignatelli, himself made a refugee several times, who gathered and
supported so many exiled and dispirited fellow Jesuits during their
Suppression.
This present booklet, gathering essential documents of the first
20 years of JRS, also serves to record this same step-by-step process,
repeated by JRS workers over and again across the world during
these past years. Moved with compassion at the plight of so many
displaced people, Jesuit Refugee Service members, who are Jesuits,
religious and lay people, have undertaken new initiatives, reflected
anew on these experiences, and planned new actions. Each time,
JRS calls again on a wide network of friends and companions to join
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