After Profession of Final Vows, Jesuit Fr. Pepe Ruiz Reflects on His Shared Vocation
by Rachel Amiri
A Jesuit for 20 years, Fr. José “Pepe” Ruiz Andujo’s Jesuit vocation has come full circle. His parents handed on the Catholic faith and Ignatian spirituality to him, and today he shares the same gifts with others. Ordained a priest in 2015, Fr. Ruiz professed his final vows in the Society of Jesus on August 5, 2024.
Currently missioned as a retreat director at Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House in Lake Dallas, Texas, “Padre Pepe,” as he is known by many, offers retreats and spiritual direction in both Spanish and English. He has a special interest in the formation of lay Ignatian spiritual directors who are fluent in Spanish and able to serve the growing Spanish-speaking Catholic population in the USA Central and Southern Province. He was instrumental in the development of the Instituto de Formación Ignaciana of Puerto Rico (IFI), and is engaged in similar efforts to cultivate future lay spiritual directors at Montserrat.
Father Ruiz’s interest in the Jesuits was born during his childhood in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. His parents met at a retreat based on Ignatian spirituality, and his father would regularly meet with Fr. Richard Thomas, SJ, from the Sacred Heart Jesuit Community in El Paso. His father’s peace after those meetings with Fr. Thomas left an impression on young Pepe.
“He would come back from meeting with Father, and God was very much now part of the picture. I saw peace in him,” Fr. Ruiz said. “I think a lot of what I was witnessing was Ignatian spirituality.”
Father Ruiz has spent years deepening his own formation in Ignatian spirituality. He holds three master’s degrees, including a Master of Divinity, a master’s in theology with a focus in spiritual direction, and a master’s in Ignatian spirituality, the last of which he earned at the University of Comillas in Spain. His tertianship experience in Mexico, where he saw how Ignatian spirituality was applied practically in the lives of people who were struggling, also shaped his ministry.
“What I love most is to give the Exercises,” he says. “Ignatius has this process that is so natural. If you follow that, you pick a person where they are and continue the process, they can grow in freedom and feel God’s love.”
The National Study of Catholic Parishes with Hispanic Ministry, by Hosffman Ospino, a professor at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, found that 43% of U.S. Catholics were Hispanic. In Texas, around half of the Catholic population a decade ago were Spanish speakers. Father Ruiz notes that the needs haven’t diminished today.
The only fully bilingual in Spanish and English Jesuit currently at Montserrat, Fr. Ruiz supports five Spanish weekend retreats a year, as well as facilitating the Spiritual Exercises in daily life in Spanish for a group of spiritual companions in training.
Father Ruiz says these demands, coupled with the overall decline in the number of Jesuits, have motivated him to invest in sharing Ignatian spirituality with the lay men and women who will be tasked with carrying forward the mission in the future. He says that laypeople can reach others who are in places that priests can’t reach.
He also knows that the presence of a Spanish-speaking Jesuit priest deeply rooted in Ignatian spirituality will be important to Jesuit works striving to meet the needs of the people of God.
“In all of our apostolates, there’s going to be a need for an Ignatian piece,” he said. “Ignatius would say that the greater good was always the one that was more universal and the one that was more multiplicative. If you put your efforts somewhere, and that effort can multiply by itself, you choose that.”
To cultivate spiritual directors, Father Ruiz envisions an organic process of deepening Ignatian formation, as men and women grow in their commitment to prayer through experiences of the Spiritual Exercises. “My dream is to take someone, wherever they are, and plug them into this process, this lived experience of Christ in their lives,” he said.
Accompanying people through the Exercises and to the consideration of what they ought to do for Christ prepares them to answer God’s call to give of themselves through spiritual direction ministry.
“The apex would be somebody making the full Spiritual Exercises. And then those who have the gifts, how can we train them so that they share it with others?” Fr. Ruiz said.
Spanish-language Ignatian resources can vary in emphasis, depending on their origin, from theological inquiries into the significance of Ignatius’ original language from some Spanish authors to the more practical approaches informed by contemporary psychology found in the United States. Offering retreats and direction to Spanish-speaking individuals in the United States leads Fr. Ruiz to draw on all of them.
Father Ruiz contributed to the development of the curriculum of the IFI in Puerto Rico, where they recently graduated two new lay spiritual directors. In Texas, a similar program is taking shape. After beginning in 2022 with an initial formation group of about 60 men and women who expressed interest in a three-year formation program, around a dozen have completed both the 18th and 19th Annotations of the Spiritual Exercises and are discerning further formation.
“Whenever I arrive at a place with a mission, I’m always thinking, ‘How can Ignatian Spirituality here take root? How can I do this in a way that it would be the most multiplicative?’” he said.
Father Ruiz is encouraged and consoled by the faith of others that he witnesses through his ministry. “When I think of IFI, I think about how people are just giving of themselves, and they’re touching hundreds and hundreds of people,” he said. “Like Ignatius would say, and it’s very scriptural, ‘What you have received freely, give freely.’”
This was particularly true during his recent profession of final vows. Friends and family, as well as the Sacred Heart Community Jesuits and Fr. Tony Rauschuber, SJ, the director of Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House, gathered to support Fr. Ruiz at Sacred Heart Church in El Paso. Seeing so many people from his life there to encourage him was particularly consoling.
“I was particularly aware of how much my vocation is a shared vocation and an experience of communion. My parents, my catechists, mentors in Jesuit life, lay leaders – all sojourners with Christ.”
