Saint Alberto Hurtado

He was born in Viña del Mar on January 22, 1901, and was four when his father died. ²⁵ To pay the family's debts his mother had to sell their modest property at a loss, the Holy See's biography says, and Alberto and his brother were sent to live with relatives, often moved from one household to the next. ² "From an early age, therefore, he experienced what it meant to be poor, to be without a home and at the mercy of others." ²

A scholarship took him to the Jesuit college in Santiago, Colegio San Ignacio. ²⁵ There he joined the Sodality of Our Lady and began to spend his Sunday afternoons with the poor in the city's most miserable neighborhoods. ² When he finished school in 1917 he wanted to become a Jesuit, but he was advised to wait and support his mother and younger brother. ²⁵ He worked in the afternoons and evenings, studied law at the Catholic University, and kept up the Sunday visits. ² His spiritual director later said of him that "he was incapable of seeing pain, nor indeed any need, without seeking a way to solve it." ⁵ Military service interrupted his studies; he took his law degree in August 1923. ²

On August 14, 1923, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Chillán. ²⁵ He studied humanities at Córdoba, in Argentina, from 1925, and in 1927 was sent to Spain for philosophy and theology. ² When the Spanish government suppressed the Society of Jesus he moved to Belgium; the Holy See's biography dates the suppression to 1931, the Society's own profile to 1932. ²⁴

He finished theology at Louvain and was ordained a priest there on August 24, 1933. ²⁵ In 1935 he took a doctorate in pedagogy and psychology, made his tertianship at Drongen, and in January 1936 came home to Chile. ²

Back in Santiago he taught religion at Colegio San Ignacio and pedagogy at the Catholic University. ² He was given charge of the students' Sodality of Our Lady, and he sent its members out to teach catechism to the poor. ² He preached retreats often and gave spiritual direction to many young men, accompanying several of them toward the priesthood. ²

In 1941 he published the book for which he was best known in his lifetime, Is Chile a Catholic Country? ² The same year he was made adviser to the youth movement of Catholic Action, first for the Archdiocese of Santiago and then for the whole country. ² The Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States puts numbers on what followed: from 1,500 students in 50 centers in 1941 to 12,000 students in 500 centers in 1944. ⁵

The work he is remembered for began with a man on a street in 1944. Hurtado wrote of it afterward: "A poor man, in shirtsleeves, suffering from tonsillitis, and shivering with cold, approached me saying he had nowhere to find shelter." ⁵ A few days later, in October 1944, he was preaching a retreat to women, and he asked them to think of the poor of the city, especially the homeless children roaming the streets of Santiago. ²⁴⁵ "Christ is without a home!" he told them. "Shouldn't we want to give him one, those of us who have the joy of a comfortable home, plenty of good food, the means to educate and assure the future of our children?" ⁵

The women answered with money, and with it he opened the first houses. ⁴⁵ The Holy See's biography lists a house for children, then one for women, then one for men; the Society's profile describes a hospice for youth first and then one for women and children. ²⁴ The Jesuit Conference dates the first house to 1945. ⁵ "Hogar" means home, and the name meant that the people taken in were welcomed into Christ's home. ⁴ What the Holy See's biography stresses is that these were not only shelters but a home-like setting, and that some houses grew into rehabilitation centers and trade schools. ² The work spread beyond Chile, the Society says, through South America. ⁴ Vatican News described it in 2018 as Chile's largest anti-poverty organization. ⁸

In 1945 he went to the United States to study Boys Town and how its model might be adapted at home. ² The Jesuit Conference notes that the Jesuit novitiate in St. Paul, Minnesota, is now named for him. ⁵

Hurtado did not stop at shelter. In 1947 he founded the Chilean Trade Union Association, ASICH, to build a union movement "inspired by the social teaching of the Church." ²⁴ Between 1947 and 1950 he wrote three works, on trade unions, on social humanism and on the Christian social order. ² In 1951 he started Mensaje, a monthly that explains the Church's social teaching and is still published by the Chilean Jesuits. ²⁴⁵ The Society of Jesus calls him "a pioneer in the Latin American Church's activities in favor of the working poor." ⁴

Pancreatic cancer ended his life within a few months. ² In great pain he was often heard to say, "I am content, Lord"; the Jesuit Conference gives it as "I am content, O Lord, I am content." ²⁵ Benedict XVI took the words as a sign of "the joy with which he always lived." ¹ He died on August 18, 1952, at fifty-one. ²⁵ So many of the poor came to his funeral at the Church of Saint Ignatius in Santiago that many of his close friends had to stay outside. ⁵

John Paul II beatified him on October 16, 1994, and Benedict XVI canonized him in Saint Peter's Square on October 23, 2005, with four others. ¹²⁷ The Jesuit Conference calls him Chile's second saint. ⁵ Addressing the Chilean pilgrims the next day, Benedict XVI called him "a great figure of the Chilean Nation" and said: "The purpose of his life was to be another Christ." ³ When Pope Francis visited Chile in January 2018, his program included a meeting with the Jesuits at the sanctuary of Saint Alberto Hurtado in Santiago. ⁸

The Catholic Apostolate Center heads its page on him "Patron Saint of Chile, Poor People, and Street Children". ⁶ That is the only statement of patronage found in the sources consulted for this page; the popes' texts and the Jesuits' profiles name none. ¹³⁴⁵ The title fits what the Holy See's biography calls the mark of his apostolate: "a great love for poor and abandoned children, an enlightened zeal for the formation of the laity, and a lively sense of Christian social justice." ²

Saint Alberto Hurtado's feast is kept on August 18, the anniversary of his death; the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States and the Catholic Apostolate Center both give that date. ⁵⁶ The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, in its profile of him, lists his liturgical memorial on August 13. ⁷

Benedict XVI read his life through the two great commandments, love of God with the whole heart and love of neighbor as oneself, calling them "the programme of life of St Alberto Hurtado." ¹ The pope put prayer and adoration of the Eucharist first, as what allowed him "to be won over by Christ", and the apostolate second, as what flowed from it. ¹

He knew from childhood what it was to live in other people's houses. ² The work he founded was named for a home and not a shelter, and the Holy See's biography insists on the difference: the poor found there "a warm home." ²⁴ Benedict XVI said he "experienced the pain of others as his own." ³

His sermon to the women on retreat did not make the poor an abstraction. It put Christ under the bridges of Santiago, in children with no father to call on, and asked his listeners whether, with their comfortable homes and good food, they did not want to give him one. ⁵ It is a hard question, and he asked it of people who could answer it.

He died at fifty-one, in pain, saying he was content. ²⁵ Benedict XVI told the Chileans that his life "invites all to responsibility, but above all to holiness." ³