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Jesuit Refugee Service

19 November 2005 

Back in August of this year, shortly after taking up my new post as Provincial of the British Jesuits, I went along to spend a few hours at the Jesuit Refugee Service centre near London Bridge. Like many a first time visitor, I suspect, I initially got lost but after a few enquiries I found the right gate, climbed the back staircase and reached the office.  

My last job was as head teacher of a secondary school and for many years, while I had known about JRS, had had many conversations about JRS , had read about JRS and had admired the work of JRS, this was, to my shame, one of my first experiences of JRS. 

My visit was all too short but I was able, nonetheless, to have a number of conversations , both with staff members and volunteers, at one or other of the desks around the office as well as over lunch,  a very good lunch.  

Three months on and I am, no doubt, better informed about the organisation, about all that there needs to be done in any successful organisation and not least at JRS. There’s the planning that’s needed, the husbanding of a limited budget, the training programmes for volunteers and the prioritisation of a mass of needs that are all out there, all at once.  

But what impressed me back then in August, indeed moved me, has stayed with me since. It is the quality of the work being done, not just with the poor, though that always has value, but with the poorest, those with no rights, often no home, no access to social support and to health care either for themselves or for their families.  

There’s the practical assistance, the phone cards, the nectar vouchers, the furniture, but still more there’s the listening and even more there’s the befriending. The relationships and the lives that are shared together;  the conversation that says  no matter what people out there  may say, you matter.  

From my all too fleeting conversations with those who were visiting the centre that afternoon, and making use of the services on offer or sharing lunch and conversation over lunch, it was evident the impact this had all made; cliché yes, but true nonetheless,  it was there to be read in their eyes.  

I learnt something then and I have since learnt much more about the history of JRS over the past 25 years and the part we here in Britain have played in it. It’s some thing that makes me, as Jesuit provincial, very proud.  

Michael Campbell-Johnston was right there at the beginning organising a consultation in the Jesuit curia in Rome, a consultation about the refugee problem, that led to Fr Pedro Arrupe’s letter in November 1980 announcing the foundation of JRS, the 25^th anniversary of which we celebrate today. Meanwhile at Heythrop College, then in Cavendish Square, Bernard Elliot was already at work with Vietnamese refugees, work that is the origin of the refugee service here in Britain.  

Thereafter, whether at home or abroad, in the Sudan or Thailand, El Salvador or Zimbabwe, Rome or Uganda, Osterley or Stockwell, in the office or the detention centre, JRS UK has built up a tradition of service and a breadth of direct experience with those whom others only read about, which enables it to have a still wider impact, not least on government policy. And underlying all this work is the willingness to step out and do things differently, the preparedness to take risks, to depend on others and not only to give but to learn once and to learn again.  No one in my position could be anything other than proud. 

I suppose that what I have come to learn most of all is how Jesuit, how indispensably Jesuit this work is.  

Way back in 1980, Fr Arrupe wrote of how the needs of refugees were so great; he wrote of how the Society of Jesus was so well placed to provide the help needed. Our world-wide network, our connections with agencies already working in the field, and our resources of generous men, all this meant that we could make an almost immediate impact.  Still more,  our educational experience meant that we could work for the wider development of the poorest people and do much to raise awareness of the underlying issues of injustice around the world, in the Church and outside, without which genuine, sustained progress would just not happen.  

We were going where the need was greatest and in a way that would bring about the more universal good. All this is very much in line with our founder St Ignatius and very Jesuit, but there’s more that’s Jesuit, indispensably Jesuit, than even that.  

Way back in the 1540’s,  when St Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus,  he used to tell his men that when they arrived in a new town, before they started teaching and preaching and hearing confessions, they were to go to the homeless and the sick and those in prison and serve the poorest.  

Fr Arrupe was once famously asked in an interview on Italian television, “Fr Arrupe, who is Jesus Christ for you?” He was somewhat startled by the question, since the interview had been about something entirely different, and still more by the answer he heard himself give, spontaneously. “For me” he replied, “Jesus Christ is everything. Jesus Christ is everything. Take Jesus Christ from my life and everything would collapse – like a human body from which someone removed the skeleton, the heart, the head. “  

“For me, Jesus Christ is everything”. From this conviction, from this experience of love, JRS was born. In his last talk as General, to JRS workers in Thailand, Fr Arrupe said that the famous Jesuit “excellence” doesn’t have to do with academic success, it has to do with commitment, excellence of commitment to Jesus Christ.   

Because Jesus was everything to him, and the poorest were everything to Jesus, then the poorest needed to be everything to Pedro Arrupe as well. He knew, as Ignatius Loyola knew, that only living the Gospel gives credibility to the Gospel. The listening and befriending, in North Rhino camp and in London Bridge; the lobbying in Westminster and the press briefings in Brussels, witness more eloquently than a thousand sermons ever could to the love of God made visible in Jesus, that the poor in spirit are indeed blessed and that theirs will be the kingdom of heaven.  

Today, there’s much for which to give thanks, and there are good reasons (and many of them are here in this church!), to celebrate. But let’s think as well in these terms. Here in JRS, in Britain and around the world much has happened and much will happen but in that happening, make no mistake, God has visited us here, God has walked and God will walk amongst us here.  

In that same last address, Fr Arrupe asked that JRS might have that elasticity of heart that always enabled it to follow the prompting of the Spirit.  Which is why he said, as his swan song to the whole Society of Jesus, something (as he put it) “one hundred percent Ignatius”:

“Pray. Pray much. Problems of this kind can never be solved by human means.” And it’s why we say, “Pedro Arrupe, right now and on into the future, pray for us. “ 

Michael Holman SJ

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The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill 2005

The government has introduced a new policy from 31 August 2005, whereby refugees are given limited leave to remain in the UK for five years. After this time, they  may be asked to return to their countries of origin if the situation there is considered safe.  This will jeopardise any chances for those with refugee status from having a secure future and conflicts with previous government policies targeting refugee integration within the U.K.

Please contact your MP and ask him or her to support Early Day Motion  (EDM) 569 on Refugee status and leave to remain in the UK, proposed by Neil Gerrard MP. The full text of the EDM is available from the JRS office.

The Methodist Church and the Quakers, sponsored by JRS have put together a briefing on the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill 2005.  Please click here to download.