Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga was born in Viña del Mar, Chile,
to an impoverished family and worked with the poor even as a
teenager. He earned a scholarship to the Jesuit college in
Santiago, and entered the Jesuits in 1923, studied in Chile
and Europe, and on his return taught in the university and
gave retreats. He was national director for Catholic Action,
founded El Hogar de Cristo to provide homes, not just housing,
for homeless children in Santiago. The project expanded to
include hospices for men and women, rehab centers, trade
schools, and homes for the aged, and is still a major social
service in Chile. Hurtado wrote to spread Catholic social
teaching. He died of cancer in 1952, and was beatified by Pope
John Paul II in 1994. His feast is kept on August 18. Today a
Jesuit university in Chile is named in his honor. Father
Hurtado's canonization will take place on 23 October 2005, the
last day of the Synod on the Eucharist. More
CHILE, 2001, the centenary of Hurtado's birth, Scott 1354-1355
For those who look for a more extended biography,
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, Superior General of the Jesuits,
wrote the following in a letter of 21 June 2005:
Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, born in Viña del Mar, Chile, on
22 January 1901, lost his father at the age of four. His
mother was forced to sell their modest property under
unfavorable conditions to pay the family debts. As a result,
Alberto and his brother were forced to live with relatives and
often had to transfer from one relative's house to another.
Only at the age of twenty was Alberto able to live with his
mother and his younger brother Miguel in their own home.
Since childhood, therefore, Alberto experienced the
condition of one who is poor, without a home and at the mercy
of others. This probably exercised an unconscious but real
influence on what will be his ministry as an apostle of the
Lord. At the same time the closeness and affection of his
mother had a weighty positive effect in the development of his
personality and spirit. In fact it was she who taught her son
Alberto that "it is good to keep the hands together in order
to pray, but it is better still to open them in order to
give."
A scholarship enabled him to attend the Jesuit High School
in Santiago. It was there that he became a member of the
Sodality of Our Lady and as such, took an active interest for
the poor, visiting them in their most miserable places every
Sunday afternoon.
After secondary studies in 1917, he would have wanted to
join the Jesuits, but he was advised to postpone his plan in
order to take care of his mother and younger brother. He
worked in the afternoon and evening and was able to support
his mother and brother, and at the same time attend school at
the Law Faculty of the Catholic University. During that
period, too, his concern was for the poor whom he continued to
visit on Sundays.
This concern, as also the topics he chose for his research,
are the key to understanding the characteristic notes of
priestly activity that Father Hurtado would later engage in:
"Regulation of Child Labor" was the topic he developed for his
Bachelor’s degree; "Work in the Home" was his topic for his
Master’s Thesis.
Obligatory military service forced him to interrupt his
studies, but once dismissed he completed his degree and
graduated at the beginning of August 1923.
On the 14th of that same month he entered the Novitiate of
the Society at Chillán. In April 1925 he was sent to Córdoba,
in Argentina, to complete his noviceship. After two years of
Novitiate and first vows, he stayed for two more years in
Córdoba to complete his formation in the Humanities. In 1927
he was sent to Barcelona, Spain, for studies in philosophy and
theology, but due to the suppression of the Jesuits in Spain
in 1931, he had to go to Belgium to complete his four years of
theology in Louvain.
Contemporaneously, because of his gifts and extraordinary
interest in studies, he succeeded in taking courses in
Pedagogy and Psychology in the State University, obtaining
first a licenciate, followed by a doctorate. After completing
his third year of Theology in Louvain, he was ordained a
priest on 24 August 1933. As soon as he completed his
theological studies, he made his Tertianship at Drongen, still
in Belgium: it was for him a period of intense spirituality in
which, on the basis on what he had learned during his biblico-theological
studies, he grew deeper in his closeness to the Lord,
conforming himself increasingly with the way of thinking and
acting of Jesus Christ.
After completing the formation cycle typical of the
Society, Hurtado returned to his country, Chile, in January
1936, where he made his solemn profession on 2 February 1941.
Once inserted in the reality of Santiago, he began to
develop an intense formation activity. He taught religion in
St. Ignatius High School and pedagogy in the Catholic
University. As in-charge of the Sodality of Our Lady for the
students, he got them involved in catechesis for the poor. In
directing the Spiritual Exercises for young people, he
accompanied many young men in their response to the priestly
vocation, and fostered in laypersons the demand of conscience
for the duty that impels every baptized to live their
Christianity coherently, according to the state of life proper
to each one, calling for the duty to seriously take the
commitment to look after one’s neighbor, and live a life of
effective charity. In dealing with the rich, entrepreneurs and
employers, Father Hurtado tried to form responsible Christians
and hence collaborators with Christ in a manner that makes
society function according to Christian principles. In working
with laborers he gave himself over completely to the
development and spread of the idea of labor that is
authentically Christian, thus abolishing the division between
Christian life and working life. "It is in his work that the
worker is sanctified," he said. It was precisely from this
vision that he derived his commitment which gave birth to the
Christian labor union that is deeply inspired by the social
doctrine of the Church.
In 1941 he was made Assistant for Catholic Action, first at
the Archdiocesan level of Santiago, and later at the national
level, a commitment which he fulfilled until 1944. Always
attentive as he was to persons in dire need of help – the
marginalized and the lonely – and always docile to the
inspirations of God, in October 1944, while he was giving the
Spiritual Exercises, Father Hurtado made an appeal to his
retreatants to consider the many who are poor in the city. His
appeal received immediate generous response and constituted
the beginning of an initiative which made him especially
famous: a kind of charitable activity that provides not only a
home for the homeless but also a warm family environment of
love, which became known as the “Hogar de Cristo”, the “Hearth
of Christ”.
Through contributions of benefactors and with the active
collaboration of committed lay people, Father Hurtado first
opened a welcome house for young people, then for women, and
later for children. The poor were finally able to find a
domestic hearth, that of Christ. Houses conceived and directed
according to such scope rapidly multiplied and also took on
new dimensions. In some instances they became rehabilitation
centers, in others, for vocational training. All these houses
were always inspired and permeated by Christian values. In the
mind and words of Father Hurtado, the purpose of the "Hogar de
Cristo" is such that the persons who are received in them
gradually develop “the knowledge of values which each one has
as a person, of his dignity as a citizen, and more so, as a
child of God”.
While carrying out his intense charitable and formation
apostolate as a priest, Father Hurtado continued to develop a
notable intellectual activity as a writer through which he
promoted the knowledge and spread of Christian social
doctrine. Between 1947 and 1950 he wrote three important works
on labor unions, on Christian humanism and on Christian social
order.
In 1951 he started the newsmagazine "Mensaje", devoted
precisely to explaining the doctrine of the Church. Through
this periodical and the articles published in it, he desired
that a Catholic publication exercised influence in the world
of thought and served to orient Catholics’ way of acting in
contemporary reality, in conformity, as he himself wrote,
“with the message that the Son of God has brought from heaven
to earth.”
Cancer of the pancreas cut short his life within a few
months. In the midst of the atrocious pain he endured, he
could often be heard repeating, “I am content, Lord”. After
having completed his existence manifesting the love of Christ
for the poor, he went home to the Lord on 18 August 1952.
These are the principal data of the life of Father Alberto
Hurtado, a man of God whom John Paul II beatified on 16
October 1994, and who will be canonized on 23 October by
Benedict XVI.
From all the sources related to the life and works of
Father Hurtado, it is quite evident that from the beginning he
was docile to the movements of the Spirit of God, and with the
passing of time, had always allowed himself to be drawn and
conquered by Christ and had thus made a true self-oblation to
the Eternal Lord as presented in the Spiritual Exercises (Ex.
Sp., n. 98). Those who knew him, as well as those who made an
in-depth study of his life, have not hesitated to say that he
was truly “in love with Christ”. This undoubtedly constitutes
the core of his life as a young student, as a Jesuit and as a
priest. From this love of Christ springs the distinctive
manner of his behavior and way of dealing with people.
What predominates therefore is his capacity to love: a gift
lavished upon him by God which he knew how to develop thus
establishing, in the light of the Gospel, an intensely growing
personal friendship the Lord. His ever-increasing familiarity
with the Lord which, in the mind of Saint Ignatius, Hurtado
acquired by contemplating the mysteries of the life of Jesus
Christ, is at the root of the attitudes characteristic of him.
Precisely because he was truly in love with Christ, he fixed
his gaze on the Lord Jesus and His way of life while He was
still on earth. He passed long hours contemplating the manner
in which Jesus acted in various situations in which He found
Himself. With the eyes of his heart, Father Hurtado specially
admired the way by which Jesus paid attention to persons, how
He made His the sufferings of those who were in pain. He was
fascinated by Jesus, and thus Jesus’ way of thinking and
living increasingly became in a way part of Hurtado’s being.
He conformed himself to Christ and thus was authentically His
disciple.
Hurtado’s relationship with the Lord, therefore, did not
have anything to do with with a spiritualist intimacy divorced
from reality. It was a real and effective sharing in Jesus’
way of living and dealing with people, seen and loved in the
social context in which they were, seen and loved truly and
effectively in the measure of their need for authentic human
warmth, altruistic love, formation and justice.
The sense of maturity that characterized him and the
seriousness with which he prepared himself to assume his
commitments both as Jesuit and as priest helped Father Hurtado
maintain through the years the healthy balance in virtue by
which he weighed the tension between the need to respond to
other people’s necessities and the exigency of always keeping
a lively personal contact with the Lord. This he faithfully
sought after because he was convinced that only in living
united to Christ could he be an instrument in God’s hands, and
receive from Him the light and goodness to spread among the
people.
And so it was that despite the manifold commitments and the
demands of the apostolate, Alberto Hurtado always found long
spaces of time to spend together with the Lord. He knew well
in fact that it was not what he could do that would favor the
good of his country, but on the contrary only that which God
communicated to him. Hence the intense need to spend long
hours in prayer so that the people of his beloved country
might open to the light that only God can give.
Such intimacy with God was for him an absolute priority and
at the same time the source of his great love for Chileans. He
wanted to communicate and transmit to them the true benefit of
progress and development according to God’s criteria and the
wisdom which He revealed to us.
One must moreover take into account that precisely from
Father Hurtado’s constant contact with the Lord comes his
singular ability to be aware of the true needs of people and
adapt his response to satisfy them with the thoughtful
delicacy and great solicitude that reflects the way Jesus
attended to those in need of help and comfort. It is still
this lively contact with the Lord that allowed him to have the
unusual interior capacity of balance, peace and confident
serenity even in the midst of difficulties and sufferings that
he often had to face.
The concern he had for others was characterized by a note
that is completely special in warmth and closeness that is not
always found in those who engage in the apostolate. In
Hurtado’s case they were very much present and this is to be
attributed to the fact that Jesus, present in the Eucharist,
was for him the center of attraction. In the daily celebration
of the Eucharist, he united his heart to that of the Lord, who
said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me
and I in him” (Jn. 6, 56). Because of this he could say, "My
Mass is my life, and my life is a prolonged Mass!” In the
hours spent in silent adoration before the tabernacle, he
allowed the risen Lord to communicate His Spirit to him and
transfuse his soul with the living flame of goodness and love,
which were the characteristic way by which he, in union with
Jesus Christ, approached people.
It is from this bond with the Lord, living and present
among us, that Hurtado drew the strength and delicacy that
distinguished his apostolate and made it become an authentic
continuation of the Lord’s mission.
He was then a priest according to the Heart of Christ who,
in celebrating the Eucharist, associated himself to the
sacrifice of the Redeemer and nourished by the Body and Blood
of Christ, received from the Lord the strength to give himself
to the people and realize the command of the Lord: “Do this in
memory of me.” Thus did Alberto Hurtado completely give
without keeping anything for himself, and consumed himself in
the service of others.
Father Hurtado was truly a contemplative in action, to whom
the hours spent in conversing with the Lord gave strength and
the ability to find God in the world around him, to be His
instrument, to do His will, working and operating as if
everything depended on him, but deeply aware that in fact
everything depended on God. Some words of the Lord were
particularly dear to him and he repeated them often: “Remain
in me as I remain in you… whoever remains in me and I in him
will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”
(Jn. 15, 4 and 5). These words were the lamplight that guided
his entire priestly life.
Events
Canonization of Blessed Alberto Hurtado S J
