By the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS)
[From “Jesuits 2025 - The Society of Jesus in the world”]

The mission of JRS and its 11,500 partners in 58 countries is to accompany and serve forcibly displaced peoples, providing advocacy on their behalf. JRS identifies their needs and promotes immediate and long-term initiatives designed to provide them with new opportunities.

The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an apostolic work of the Society of Jesus to accompany forcibly displaced people. The vast majority are victims of persecution, armed conflicts, human rights’ violations, or natural disasters. Today, JRS is present in 58 countries worldwide, and has approximately 11,500 apostolic partners, comprising Jesuits, male and female religious staff members, lay volunteers and refugee staff members. They hail from different countries, cultures and religious or secular backgrounds yet work together on a shared mission to accompany, serve, and provide advocacy for refugees and forcibly displaced peoples.

The fact their needs are vast is beyond question, whether the cause is globalisation or rapidly multiplying humanitarian crises. Mid-way through 2023, there were an estimated 110 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Of that number, 36.4 million were refugees, 62.5 million were internally displaced people, and 6.1 million, asylum seekers. Today, the forced displacement of entire peoples and influx of refugees affects every continent on Earth. Regrettably, most refugees are taken in by countries with low or medium national incomes: Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Colombia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.

JRS wishes to respond innovatively and pro-actively to this complex global reality by vigorously implementing the Universal Apostolic Preferences of the Society of Jesus. In JRS, this takes the specific form of a shared apostolic discernment to identify which groups of forcibly displaced peoples are the most vulnerable, which needs the most urgent, and what can be done immediately and in the long term to promote a greater degree of justice for them. Every apostolic level of JRS is usually involved in this process, including regional teams, national teams, and people on the ground, as well as representatives of those receiving help including refugees and other displaced people, and of course, our invaluable humanitarian partners. As a result, in 2022, we were able to help one and a half million women, men, and children all over the world by prioritising projects involving reconciliation, mental health, pyscho-social support, education, various means of subsistence and types of social impact.

Yet the defining characteristic of JRS at the heart of all our “action” or apostolic activity on behalf of our forcibly displaced brothers and sisters is our primary, common resolve to “be alongside” them. That means walking alongside the forcibly displaced or refugees on migrant routes, helping them bear heavy, burdensome days, suffering whenever we perceive their frustration or desperation, and simply giving them some love. What nurtures this compassion in action is an awareness that we share the same humanity. We activate that compassion by offering the forcibly displaced and refugees some of our time and energy, by listening to them, and sharing in their hopes and sorrows. It is our ardent hope that through this ministry of accompaniment, consolation and healing, the people we accompany may heal their inner wounds and recover a lost dignity. And we also hope that by becoming reconciled with themselves and that part of humanity which acts as their oppressor, they may re-build their lives on more just, equitable foundations.

Over the years, the apostolic workers of JRS have gradually experienced and developed a profound understanding of the vision Fr Pedro Arrupe outlined so clearly in his letter founding the JRS: “the help needed is not only material: in a special way the Society is being called to render a service that is human, educational and spiritual. (...) God is calling us through these helpless people. We should consider the chance of being able to assist them a privilege that will, in turn, bring great blessings to ourselves and our Society.”

Occasionally, some of our JRS partners acquire a personal experience of this growth in humanity and spirituality along the walk they share with refugees, along this two-way accompaniment. Our partners are surprised, while conversing with the refugees, by the depth of their reflections, which, in turn shed light upon their own experiences of sorrow or suffering. In the Other who is by their side, they find a reflection of their own humanity. Their lives assume fruitful meaning, and they embrace a journey towards God. When they begin to help JRS, our partners often seek to be generous to the forcibly displaced, to offer hospitality and protection to foreigners excluded from society, broken within, and stripped of everything. Yet ultimately, they realise that from the hands of the excluded they themselves are the recipients of a precious gift. And they learn to rebuild their lives on stronger values, and encounter the divine, whichever name they may give it, according to the religious or secular environment they happen to live in.

[Photos © JRS]