In all its 431-year history, the Society of Jesus has never gone outside continental Europe to find a Father General. Meeting last week in Rome, Jesuit delegates kept the tradition intact, elected the Very Rev. Pedro Arrupe, 57, Spanish-born Jesuit provincial (area chief) of Japan, to be the order's 28th leader and the Roman Catholic Church's new "Black Pope."
The sixth Spaniard to head the Jesuits, Arrupe was born in Bilbao, studied medicine at the University of Madrid, and entered the Jesuit order in 1927. Five years later, despite the careful neutrality of men like Arrupe, the Spanish Republic banned Jesuits...
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