By Fr. Tom Smolich, SJ
In August 2023, Pope Francis was in Portugal for World Youth Day. During a visit to a social center in a poor community in Lisbon, Francis put aside his prepared text and spoke about love. He said, “There is no such thing as an abstract love; it doesn’t exist,” adding that real love “gets its hands dirty” in the concrete circumstances of people’s lives.
During almost nine years with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), I was privileged to encounter such real love from Thailand to Mexico and everywhere in between.
In January 2015, I began my time with JRS in Masisi, a remote town in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Dirty hands and feet were the rule in “temporary” camps built on dirt that regularly turned to mud. I visited, I said Mass, I witnessed love shared among people displaced by violence and illegal mining, including many of our staff members who had fled violence as well. As the acting bookkeeper, I learned what it meant to care for the resources needed to support our work. More than anything, I remember the joy of those we serve and staff members alike: Christ was present.
I took on the role of JRS international director that October. Though I was based in Rome, I carry with me indelible images of what love looks like. I visited Venezuelan refugees and displaced Colombians who had built a new community on an incredibly steep hillside. I shared tea with families whose daughters we were educating in Afghanistan. I met tribal people in Myanmar who could not return to their homes because of violence. I had lunch with asylum seekers welcomed by JRS England who were unwelcome by the government. If there is one word that captures the JRS mission, it is accompaniment—walking with those we encounter in love is to see Christ in them.
In Rome itself, I was blessed to work with a dynamic staff who knew the urgency of our mission and the need to adapt it. Our hands did not get dirty too often, but we took on the hard work of creating an infrastructure that supported our work in the field. In 2015, JRS saw itself as a collection of loosely bound small projects. Now, JRS is a global ministry of the Society of Jesus, offering accompaniment on the ground that benefits from worldwide programming, policies and support. COVID was a challenge to our mission, but the more than 8,000 JRS staff and volunteers rose to the occasion, maintaining our accompaniment and service in creative ways through local and global collaboration.
Literally down the street from the JRS office is the Vatican, and it was a grace that my time with JRS overlapped with Pope Francis. From his first papal visit to Lampedusa, an island of refuge in the middle of the Mediterranean, to his constant reminder to welcome people fleeing Ukraine and other wars, Francis inspired our work. Putting his words into practice became shorthand for our goals and dreams.
My final visit as international director was to Syria; I visited Damascus, Homs and Aleppo in March 2023. I was privileged to spend three days in Aleppo after the devastating February 6 earthquake. There the dirt is from broken walls: concrete pulverized by war and shaking ground. Amid ruins in central Aleppo, JRS serves poor Muslim communities with education, psychosocial accompaniment and health care, helping them deal with distress and loss so that new life can emerge. There is nothing abstract about a war or an earthquake; JRS staff there continue to offer their hands in support of those in need.
In the years between DRC and Syria, I visited our work in 44 other countries. I was fortunate to meet those we serve, hearing their hopes and challenges, their requests, and their belief in JRS. I was grateful for and impressed by the accompaniment of our team members throughout the world. They often work in complicated and dangerous situations, yet never shy away from dirty hands and open hearts.
Completing my time with JRS in October 2023 was bittersweet. I had done what I could do, and it was time for new perspectives and ideas. Yet I had been involved in the Society’s urgency to be of service to those most in need, a desire rooted in the Gospel, confirmed by Pope Francis and part of every Jesuit’s sense of who we are. It was hard to leave those I had come to know and love; gratitude beyond gratitude was my experience.
Thanks to the generosity of province benefactors, I had some downtime before my next assignment. I did some writing about JRS, led the Jesuits West Province’s Apostolic Planning Implementation Committee for six months, and got my hands dirty in the Jesuit community garden on Benton Street near Santa Clara University. I was also able to participate in a sabbatical program on Ignatian spirituality in Manresa, Spain, where St. Ignatius developed the Spiritual Exercises. From mid-June to mid-July, I will serve as retreat director for the 30-day Spiritual Exercises at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos, California.
My new assignment is a homecoming of sorts. On July 31, I will become the rector of the Jesuit School of Theology (JST) of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, working with Jesuit faculty and students in their study, research, pastoral accompaniment and, for many, preparation for ordination. (I received my Master of Divinity degree there prior to ordination in 1986.) Over 60% of Jesuits now studying at JST are international, and in most cases I have visited their homelands and know a bit about their realities. It’s always been my experience that a new assignment incorporates what I have done before in surprising ways—and coming back to Berkeley is no exception.
“There is no such thing as abstract love; it does not exist.” Whether in Berkeley or Rome, Aleppo or South Sudan, Pope Francis’ exhortation to keep love real is an invitation to all of us, and I’m grateful for the places God has invited me to share this love in my Jesuit life.
Editor’s Note: JRS was founded by Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe, SJ, in 1980 as a response to the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese “boat people” fleeing their country at the end of the Vietnam War. From small efforts such as teaching English to refugees living in camps, JRS grew into a now-worldwide response serving 1.2 million people annually in 58 countries. Fr. Arrupe has been recognized as a “Servant of God” since his cause for beatification was opened by the Vatican in 2019.
