Global Ignatian Advocacy Network: Defending the poor in a globalised world

A response to the call of General Congregation 35:

“The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanisms and links among our present problems…”

General Congregation 35 (2008), D.3, n. 28

Characteristics of the Global Ignatian Advocacy Network of networks:

• Based on our contact with poor communities
• Communicating their hopes
• Incorporating Ignatian values
• Global and inter-cultural
• In collaboration with other civil society and Church networks
• In collaboration with other apostolic sectors
• Based on rigorous research

(El Escorial, November 2008)

Where it all began

In November 2008, at a Workshop in Ignatian Advocacy in El Escorial (Madrid) with people coming from Jesuit social centres all over the world, Thematic Networks for advocacy were identified. There are now five Networks:

Objectives for 2011-2012:

• Organize the Core Groups of the five Thematic Networks
• Internal mapping of the Jesuit institutions working in these thematic issues
• Identify civil and Church possible collaborators
• Establish a planning for the future

An initiative of the Social Apostolate of the Society of Jesus

Coordinated by the Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat at the Jesuit Curia in Rome:
Patxi Álvarez SJ
Uta Sievers
Tina Negri