Saint Alberto Hurtado SJ

“Christ roams through our streets in the person of so many suffering poor, sick, dispossessed and people thrown out of their miserable slums: Christ huddled under bridges, in the person of so many children who lack someone to call father, who have been deprived for many years from a mother’s kiss upon their foreheads…Christ is without a home!”

St Alberto Hurtado SJ

Alberto Hurtado SJ (1901-1952) served the poor in Chile and founded the Hogar de Cristo or “Home of Christ” for the poor and abandoned young people. He was a staunch advocate of workers rights. Find out more about his life here.

As the Hurtado Jesuit Centre in the UK explain:

“Alberto Hurtado realised the great dangers of his time. In opposition to exploitative capitalism and communist revolution under way in various countries of the world, he, inspired by the social teaching of the Church, promoted a different path: a Christian Social Order, based on the two great virtues of love and justice. But he did not want charity without justice. He said: ‘Many works of charity can bear our society, but all this immense effort of generosity, much to praise, fails to repair the ravages of injustice. Injustice causes far more evils than can be repaired by charity. ‘ ‘We must be righteous before we are generous.'”

Hurtado Jesuit Centre