Reflection on Alberto Hurtado, SJ
By John Swope, SJ

From 1992 until 2000, I had the opportunity to contribute many articles and serve on the editorial board of the Chilean Jesuit monthly, Mensaje.

It was during this period that I became more conscious of the enormous apostolic creativity and vitality of our next Jesuit saint, Alberto Hurtado, who founded Mensaje magazine and many other important apostolic works in Chile. I am 51 years of age, and Hurtado died in 1952 at that same age. I frequently ask myself, "How could God have done so much through this one man?"

In many conversations with his Jesuit classmates and friends, it became increasingly clear to me that Hurtado was truly a "man of consolation," bringing the challenge of the Gospel to Chile during the late 1930s and 40s. He made the Gospel challenge accessible, compelling and attractive; helping many to find deep consolation in living it out.

In Chile today, one of Hurtado's great popular legacies is a simple question, "What would Christ do in my place?" This compelling question and the courage to respond to it form part of the spiritual landscape of the Chilean Province Jesuits and their lay collaborators, and also inspires the pastoral activity of the Catholic Church in Chile.

In addition, I can attest that this haunting question, "What would Christ do in my place?", deeply influenced the direction of public policy after Chile's return to democracy in 1990, as deeply committed men and women began to design policies in education, housing and health care that would benefit the poor, after many years of oppression and indignity suffered during the Pinochet military dictatorship. Hurtado was an inspiration to an important part of the political class in Chile, especially those most committed to overturning the social inequities that deepened in the 1970s and 80s.

So, it is in the Society of Jesus in Chile, in the life of the Church and even in the sphere of public policy that I can see the presence of Hurtado.

Many Maryland Jesuits heard of Hurtado from the Chilean scholastics whom Fr. Gus Weigel, SJ, helped bring to Woodstock in the years immediately after Hurtado's death in 1952. In the Maryland Province, we have now been blessed with a man who has been declared a saint by the Church, with a light that has burned so brightly and so intensely. Perhaps the special grace of holiness has been given to us in a different way ... here and there ... partially in some and partially in others. For me they are Walter Ciszek for his missionary zeal and extraordinary fidelity; Horace McKenna with his accessible wisdom and service to the mission of justice; Brick Graham and Jack Carboy as extraordinary confessors for me and many others. The sanctity of the Maryland Province is distributed far and wide among us in many ways.

Among Jesuit saints, Alberto Hurtado is the 50th. He is the first one to be born in the 20th century, and the time from his death to his canonization has been the shortest in the history of the Society.