hiroshima 7

Pedro Arrupe... 

in 1923, moved from Bilbao to Madrid... 

to attend the Medical School of the Universidad Complutense. 

There, he met Severo Ochoa, who later won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. One of his teachers was Juan Negrín, a pioneer in physiology, who would become [socialist] Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic during the Civil War (1936–1939). Arrupe received the top prize in the first year anatomy course.

In 1926, his beloved father died. 

That filled him with great sadness. 

In the summer of the same year, he went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes with his four sisters. The experiences he gathered from Lourdes were fundamental for his future life. In the conversations with Jean-Claude Dietsch SJ, he described his experiences as follows:

'For me Lourdes is the city of miracles. I stayed there for some three months. Being a medical student, I obtained permission to observe the work of the Office of Verification. I was, thus, the witness of three miraculous cures from the very moment they took place in the midst of the faithful who were praying to the Virgin Mary, and then on through the medical verification that was carried out by the doctors who were atheists. 

'This impressed me very much, because I had often heard my professors in Madrid, who also were atheists, speak of the 'superstitions of Lourdes'. There was born my vocation, in that atmosphere of both simplicity and grandeur at the feet of the Virgin Mary, midst the noisy insistent prayer of the pilgrims and the sweet murmurings of the river Gave.'

With regard to these gathered findings... 

he could not continue his medical studies. 

On 15 January 1927, he joined the Society of Jesus.

He was unable to pursue his studies for the priesthood in Spain, since the Order had been expelled by the Spanish Republican government (1931–1939). 

Accordingly, the young Arrupe did his studies in the Netherlands and Belgium, and at St. Louis University School of Divinity in St. Marys, Kansas, where he was ordained in 1936. 

Arrupe then completed a doctorate in Medical Ethics.

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