On January 26 and 27, the Meeting of the Spanish Jesuits working in Universities took place at the Santa Rafaela María de las Esclavas del Sagrado Corazón Exercise House in Madrid. These meetings have progressively gained in duration and specific weight, which speaks of the ties that are being woven between UNIJES, transversally to the institutions, and that allow us to discover ourselves as a Jesuit apostolic community at the service of the mission. university.

In this case the title of the meeting was “How do we dream of the presence of UNIJES in the future?” and I wanted to connect with the work that is being done at the provincial level to think about the presence of Jesuits in different works in the future, in the context of demographic decline that is ours.

The Meeting was attended by some 31 Jesuits from the different institutions of the Sector (from Comillas, Deusto, Loyola, IQS and ESADE), in addition to the delegate of the Sector, Ana García-Mina, and several guests. 

The meeting began on the afternoon of Friday the 26th, after the introduction of the delegate, with a talk by the Provincial Father, Enric Puiggròs SJ, in which he invited the group to think about the sector looking to the future. In this key, the Provincial highlighted the essentiality of the intellectual mission for the entire apostolate of the Company, the need to make sustainable the network formed by the institutions of UNIJES (in this sense he highlighted three areas: Theology, I+M-Pastoral and governance ), the need for creativity to think about the presence of Jesuits in the sector in the future, and the existence of four vectors to each find its place (research, teaching, identity and mission and government). After the Provincial's presentation we discussed these contributions in small groups and in a subsequent larger meeting with him.

The morning of Saturday the 27th was dedicated rather to receiving a friendly view from outside of the Jesuit presence in the works of UNIJES. Thus, first of all, a round table took place on this topic of the presence of the Jesuits, made up of professors from our institutions: María Aláez (Deusto), Xavi Casanovas (IQS), Julio Jiménez (Loyola). At this table, based on each person's experience, they reflected on the importance of a close presence to accompany the staff, the need to always maintain in the university mission the intellectual dimension of search and love for knowledge, and the need of applying criteria from the Constitutions to choose priority presences, which frequently leads to taking care of the governance of works or being a reference in transversal groups. All the interventions inevitably pointed to the need on the part of the laity to develop greater proactivity in the evangelizing dimension and in the identity and mission of the centers.

Secondly, that same morning we had a second round table, this time with students from our centers on the same topic. María de Álava (Deusto), Gabriela Herráiz (ESADE) and María Larrú (Comillas) participated. At this table, in a relaxed and spontaneous way, we reviewed different important topics about the Jesuit presence, receiving echoes from these three students: the presence of Ignatian values ​​in the life and teaching of the centers, the value of accompaniment and the concrete presence of the Jesuits, the current reactions of students to the Ignatian and believing offer that is offered, the difficulties in considering a vocation to the Society of Jesus, the accessibility of the Jesuits, their visibility or the languages ​​used to transmit what is Ignatian.

In short, it was a very rich and illuminating meeting on a problem – that of the presence of the Jesuits in the Sector – that urges us to seek solutions and activate our creativity. At the end of the meeting, in the final evaluation, the realistic, as well as creative and hopeful, outlook that had helped us develop the meeting stood out strongly. Likewise, it was an experience of brotherhood and gratitude to have been able to receive a friendly external view of us through the teachers and students who spoke to us.

The meeting was also the first moment in which the new UNIJES delegate, Ana García-Mina, met with the Jesuits of the sector. Everyone expressed their gratitude to Ana for her availability and we were able to appreciate her good work and creativity in designing the meeting.