This is the third edition of a series of articles about the secretaries and directors of works of JCEP. This time, we got the testimonial of Filipe Martins, the secretary for Social Apostolate of the Jesuit Conference of European Provincials and director of JESC - Jesuit European Social Centre. 

Jesuits in Europe have long engaged with the continent’s political and social developments through reflection, formation, and advocacy inspired by Ignatian discernment and Catholic Social Teaching. In Brussels, at the heart of the European Union, this commitment takes concrete shape in efforts to bridge faith and public life, promote the common good, and accompany European policymaking with ethical reflection. The following text offers a personal and institutional perspective from the Director of the Jesuit European Social Centre, tracing the Jesuit involvement in the European project from its post-war roots to today’s work in leadership formation, ecology, and collaboration with people of good will for a more just, united, and sustainable Europe.

An act of honesty at the beginning of this text is admitting that only after arriving to Brussels I started understanding what the European Union (EU) is really about. Until then, in my home country Portugal, the EU was quoted mostly when the governments wanted to implement some laws with which, they would say, “we don’t agree but we are forced to adopt by the EU”. Or when, in the summer months, the elections for the European Parliament had a very low attendance, because of not being perceived as relevant enough to prevent many from spending the day at the beach.

 Now, after three years of being the director of the Jesuit European Social Centre (JESC), one of the Jesuit institutions operating in the “Brussels bubble”, I came to realise both the importance and the complexity of the EU. Many of the laws and policies regarding the so-called “shared competences” in the 27 EU countries are the result of often year-long negotiations between the European Parliament (with 720 MEPs elected by the European citizens), the European Council (the 27 governments) and the European Commission (a sort of “European Government” with 27 commissioners, one per EU country). These “shared competences” cover broad areas such as economy, environment, social cohesion, justice, international aid, research and trade, and when a country enters the “EU club”, it accepts the “rules of the game” as defined in the EU Treaties. If on the one hand it may look like an almost “unmanageable monster” (and sometimes it is!), on the other it’s this union between many different countries (small and large, rich and not-so-rich, with very diverse histories, cultures and languages) that allows not only for many countries to develop (which is clearly the case of Portugal since it joined), but to stand together and support one another in moments of crisis such as the 2009 financial breakdown, the COVID pandemia or the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 The history of JESC

 Also to my surprise, only in Brussels I discovered that this “European project”, started shortly after World War II as a project of peace by a group of politicians from formerly enemy countries (Robert Schuman from France, Konrad Adenauer from Germany, Alcide De Gasperi from Italy and Paul-Henri Spaak from Belgium), has been followed almost from the beginning by some Jesuits engaged with the “Office catholique d’information et d’initiative pour l’Europe” (OCIPE). OCIPE was founded in Strasbourg in 1956, with the mission of reflecting, researching and publishing about the European integration process, through the lens of both global ethics and Catholic Social Teaching. After Strasbourg, OCIPE opened offices in Brussels (1963), Budapest and Warsaw (1990), until a deep reorganisation took place in 2012, when the Brussels office became JESC, under the direct governance of the President of the Jesuit Conference of European Provincials, and the other ones were integrated into their respective Jesuit provinces.  

 In the years after, JESC kept OCIPE’s focus on “European Affairs”, but - also as a consequence of fewer Jesuits being available - reduced its publishing work and connected more with international groups working on the same topic, such as the pan-European network Initiative of Christians for Europe (IXE). Another group worth mentioning is Passion for Europe, made of passionate people from different European organisations who gathered around JESC Secretary for European Affairs to organise in Namur a yearly “Passion for Europe Weekend Workshop” on different topics, with the presence of high-level EU experts and politicians. 

 Simultaneously, JESC started developing other lines of work. Following the 3^rd Universal Apostolic Preference (UAP) of the Jesuits, “Journeying with the Youth”, since 2019 the European Leadership Programme (ELP) has been hosting 20 young professionals who apply to the program, among the almost 2000 who arrive to Brussels every March and October to participate in the 5-month-long internships offered by the different EU institutions. The ELP Fellows form a “community” living in the same house, and apart from their daily work, they have a professional mentor and a spiritual coach who help them to develop their self-designed “Personal Mission Plan”. An essential part of the program is also the weekly evening meetings with senior EU officials (regular speakers are, for instance, the former President of the Council Herman van Rompuy and the Head of the Legal Service Daniel Calleja, both Jesuit Alumni), who give witness of lifelong commitments at the service of the European Common Good. With 14 cohorts and more than 150 Alumni until now, ELP is slowly but steadily establishing itself as a solid and trustworthy program, forming and connecting those who will possibly be future leaders of the European project.

 The recent focus on Ecology

 A third and more recent line of work is Ecology, also in alignment with the 4^th UAP, “Caring for our Common Home”. Even if it’s not mandatory, it has been practice until now that the Director of JESC is also the Secretary of Social Justice and Ecology of JCEP (Jesuit Conference of European Provincials), with its role of coordination of the different European social and ecology networks. And if both migration and international emergencies and development have been covered for long by JRS Europe and the Xavier Network, the field of Ecology hadn’t until recently any European coordination.

 So JESC engaged with determination on this field. A new European network of provincial eco-delegates was formed in 2022. The JESC Carbon Initiative (JCI) has been helping some European Provinces (namely the EOF-Western French-speaking and HIB-Irish) to assess the “carbon footprint” of their communities and institutions (in particular schools) and to plan their way forward in regard to the crucial and urgent “green transition”. JCI is also involved in the ongoing carbon footprint assessment of the General Curia offices, with the final results expected to be published soon.

 Advocacy has also shaped the recent JESC’s Ecology work. We’ve started accompanying COPs since COP27, by producing awareness-raising materials and inviting the Jesuit audiences to write to their governments in demand of fair and sustainable decisions and commitments. And after the COP28 and COP29 campaigns being jointly produced with other European and African partners, it was a bliss to fully engage in the recent COP30 Jesuits for Climate Justice campaign, the first-ever global advocacy campaign of the Society of Jesus, connecting people and institutions from all continents and from all apostolic sectors.

 A faith-based organization in the Brussels secular context

 Being the headquarters of most EU institutions, Brussels is indeed a place for advocacy and lobbying. Here we can find all sorts of business associations and corporate representatives, trying to engage with policymakers and to shape the EU policies according to their interests. The same applies to NGOs and other civil society organisations, working on many different fields such as human rights and democracy, education and culture, humanitarian and development aid, and health and wellbeing. Ecology is no exception, and since 2023 JESC has been working on different undertakings, namely the Future Generations Initiative, an ambitious project in which we lead a coalition of more than 30 international organisations and that has allowed us to work closely with some MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) and with the team of the European Commissioner Glenn Micallef. The aim, in short, is for the EU to adopt a long-term sustainable perspective in all its policies, through objective criteria-oriented and legally-binding impact assessments. A novel Strategy for Intergenerational Fairness will be published in March, and accompanying its implementation is the next step.

 Even if some of our usual partners, such as Caritas Europa, COMECE (the Commission of the EU bishops) or Don Bosco International, are also faith-based, in these last years we have developed collaboration with other international organisations who don’t usually relate to the church (they are the majority in Brussels), such as the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Food Policy Coalition, Birdlife and even Greenpeace. And so far this has been also a huge and happy source of learning, from their scientific expertise (which we often lack), and also of sharing, as their teams are often made up of committed people who, even if far from our faith, are moved by the same wish to build and “fight for” a fairer and more sustainable world. Today, as in the time of Ignatius 500 years ago, at JESC we have the strong feeling that the call for bridging these different “worlds” and for fostering these collaborations among “people of good will” remains very present. And Brussels is definitely one of the places where this call can and is already being embodied. 

 Filipe Martins sj

JESC Director and JCEP Secretary for Social Justice and Ecology