While Father General and his extended Council are spending this entire week on the theme of collaboration in the Society, the Secretariat for Social Justice and Ecology is already very much involved in this process, forming and supporting networks at the Province, Conference and international levels.

In fact, in a letter dated 26 May “To the whole Society”, Fr Arturo Sosa states that, “in today’s globalised context, we are confronted with the need to act as a universal body with a global mission, capable of integrating the diversity and uniqueness of the contexts, cultures, times and peoples in which we live and work. Collaboration and networking offer richness, solidarity and a challenging opportunity for our engagement in today’s complex and changing socio-economic, political and religious situations. The urgency of discerning together the appropriate apostolic structures to achieve the ambitious apostolic goals we have set for ourselves is therefore clear.”

One of the paths already tried since 2008 is that of GIAN: the Global Ignatian Advocacy Network. Father General reiterates that this network advocates for the poor and vulnerable with the goal of making their voices heard. It seeks to concretely implement the Universal Apostolic Preferences and the efforts “to see all things new in Christ,” in the spirit of the Ignatian Year.

To facilitate the activities of GIAN, the Secretariat for Social Justice and Ecology has just published a “Governance Scheme”, which gives a deeper understanding of GIAN, its vision, how the Society can play an advocacy role for the necessary social transformation and how its “Ignatian” way of proceeding gives a particular colour to its intervention. This text will be particularly useful for those, Jesuits and lay people, who are involved in advocacy work and who seek to give to their commitment a dimension beyond their local or regional context.

GIAN is an excellent example of a Jesuit network that, without substituting itself for the ordinary structures of the Society - those of the central government, the Conferences and the Provinces - offers an “added value” by creating avenues of collaboration that go beyond these structures and that allow the Society to participate in issues that are truly global.