By Reynaldo Belfort Pierrilus, SJ
After touring Jesuit works in Denver, St. Louis, Houston and New Orleans, Superior General Arturo Sosa Abascal, SJ, landed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to continue his official visitation of the Jesuits USA Central and Southern (UCS) Province. His first stop was at the Centro Universitario Católico (or Catholic University Center, CUC). Located in the center of a dense urban area, on a street in the residential district of Río Piedras heavily frequented by university students, the CUC has served the university community for a century. Since its founding – and especially following its apostolic renewal in August 2023 – the CUC has served as a space of fellowship and spiritual formation for university students and young professionals.
Since I returned to my hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico, to begin my Jesuit regency at Colegio San Ignacio, the Jesuit high school in San Juan, I have been blessed to discover and appreciate the profound historical richness of the CUC. It was a great blessing to introduce Fr. General to the unique community that has developed over the decades.
How did the CUC come into being?
Founded in 1903, the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras (UPR–RP) was established as a public, secular institution and has long since been recognized for academic excellence and accessibility. Building on that success, in 1927, historian Richard Patée founded Centro Universitario Católico on campus to support Catholic students and staff by nurturing their faith within the university setting.
As the center evolved, Fr. Antonio González Quevedo, SJ, began offering spiritual support and was later appointed director in 1953. A pivotal moment in the history of the CUC – and in the Catholic life of Puerto Rico – came in 1959, when Fr. Quevedo hired Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago to assist in the Center’s work. Rodríguez Santiago was later beatified in 2001 by Pope Saint John Paul II, and the Church in Puerto Rico continues to await, with loving hope, the canonization of the first Puerto Rican saint.
Guided by Quevedo, Blessed Carlos, many Jesuits, other men and women religious, and lay collaborators, the CUC flourished particularly between the 1970s and 1990s, offering a wide range of pastoral and formative activities that complemented the university’s academic life. In the early 2000s, however, demographic shifts, socioeconomic challenges, growing secularism and financial difficulties led to a significant decline in apostolic activity, which was further intensified by Hurricane María and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet even in this period of near inactivity, the Holy Spirit never ceased to act.
Renewal of the Apostolate
After returning from World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, several Catholic university students met for the first time with a group of Jesuits (myself included) to engage in dialogue and outline new steps to revive this ministry in Río Piedras. Together, we returned to the CUC to breathe new life into it. From this renewed encounter, a new apostolic model emerged: a team of student leaders accompanied by a Jesuit who serves as a point of contact, helping coordinate efforts and resources as the needs arise. With this team, we plan a calendar of activities – Masses, spiritual formation workshops, Eucharistic adoration, fellowship activities and more – closely oriented to their spiritual needs and attentive to the issues that most concern them today. This contrasts with a model in which religious leaders bring a plan for students simply to consume, without students exercising their own leadership.
Additionally, college students from other public and private college campuses, and even young professionals, started showing up to our events. More generally, over the course of two years as my regency experience unfolded, I have been deeply consoled to witness how this apostolate of the CUC has consistently enabled university students to take greater ownership of their Catholic faith and to commit themselves more fully to their Church, especially amid the strongly secular university environment where ideas of all kinds circulate freely.
For this reason, the visit of our Superior General, Arturo Sosa, has been both timely and providential. The general arrived at this historic space of the CUC to listen to the perspective of a university community that continues to grow stronger and attract collaborators for this mission.
Three university students who have been positively impacted by the center’s work shared with the general what a hope-filled future would look like for them. The importance of Christ’s centrality in our lives in the face of many challenges of our time (i.e., hyper-digitalization, social polarization, threats to our common home, etc.) was a recurring theme across their responses. Furthermore, each of their responses carries weight in the face of a Puerto Rican reality marked by socioeconomic challenges, a low birth rate and high levels of emigration, often to the mainland United States.
For several years now, the Jesuits have been learning and reflecting – not without some difficulty – how to implement effectively our third Universal Apostolic Preference in our current realities: to accompany young people in the creation of a hope-filled future. I can testify that the work of the Centro Universitario Católico has been a concrete manifestation of this accompaniment, now embraced as a mission of our Jesuit community in Puerto Rico.
Young people are the future of our Church. Much remains to be done in this recently renewed ministry, in which the Jesuits have been present for more than 70 years. Yet we remain confident that God will continue to pour out God’s grace through this work, for God’s Greater Glory.
Reynaldo Belfort Pierrilus, SJ, is a Jesuit scholastic currently missioned to the Catholic University Center at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. A native Puerto Rican, Reynaldo graduated with a degree in computer engineering before entering the Society of Jesus.
This story originally appeared on the website of the Jesuit General Curia.
Featured photo: Superior General Fr. Arturo M. Sosa Abascal, SJ, gathers with Jesuits and students of the CUC in Puerto Rico following Mass.
