Fr Brian Grogan has written an extraordinary book for ordinary people. In simple, clear language he shows how God is involved in all the details of our lives. "God does not blush easily at our faults," he writes. "In failure or in success, every individual remains uniquely important to God. He waits for us, searches for us, and cares for us; always drawing us to the person of Jesus, who offers himself as our constant companion on our pilgrim way and who helps us to shape our world by making wise decisions."

This book tells the life of Pedro Arrupe SJ, 1907-1991, whose cause for beatification was introduced in 2019.  Arrupe played a central role in the Church of the twentieth century and his influence endures in the many who are fired by his idealism, vision and way of life. A tiny man with a heart truly larger than the world, he lived like a church mouse, prayed for four hours daily, and had a vibrant relationship with the three divine Persons through his sixteen years as General of the Jesuits. Born in Bilbao, he experienced the poverty of the Madrid slums while pursuing medical studies, and witnessed miracles at Lourdes which led him to join the Jesuit Order in 1927. He was expelled from Spain with his fellow-Jesuits in 1931 and began working in Japan in 1938 only to endure thirty-three days of solitary confinement on charges of espionage, and was a first responder in the oven of Hiroshima when the atom bomb fell there in 1945. He was elected in 1965 as superior general of the Jesuits, then numbering 36,000, and led them fearlessly for sixteen challenging years as the Church grappled with the decrees of the Vatican Council, 1962-1965.  He made a refreshed Ignatian spirituality available not only to the Society but to Christians everywhere who try to find God in their daily lives. His renewal of Jesuit life and mission crystallised around the faith that does justice, and he challenged Jesuit alumni worldwide to become ‘men and women for and with others’. In 1980 he founded the Jesuit Refugee Service which has now spread globally. 

In the twentieth-century struggle for racial equality, there was perhaps no setting more fraught and contentious than the public schools of the American south. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1951, a student strike for better school facilities became part of the NAACP legal campaign for school desegregation. That step ultimately brought this rural, agricultural county to the Supreme Court of the United States as one of five consolidated cases in the historic 1954 ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Unique among those cases, Prince Edward County took the extreme stance of closing its public school system entirely rather than comply with the desegregation ruling of the Court. The schools were closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964, until the Supreme Court ruling in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County ordered the restoration of public education in the county. This historical anthology brings together court cases, government documents, personal and scholarly writings, speeches, and journalism to represent the diverse voices and viewpoints of the battle in Prince Edward County for-and against-educational equality. Providing historical context and contemporary analysis, this book offers a new perspective of a largely overlooked episode and seeks to help place the struggle for public education in Prince Edward County into its proper place in the civil rights era.

This booklet offers an unique presentation of the unfolding of our universe. It interweaves the insights of contemporary science with Christian faith, and reveals the divine orchestration of the Creation Story in a dramatic, fresh and appealing way. Part One offers a brief background to the new story of creation which has emerged over the past century with the discovery of the expanding universe. We now know that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Part Two takes the reader through thirty stages of the development of the cosmos and of our Earth from the big bang to the present day. Each stage is succinctly outlined and offers material for prayerful pondering.

With an Introduction by Peter McVerry SJ Why might this man be declared a saint? Pedro Arrupe, twenty-eighth Superior General of the Society of Jesus, re-founded the Jesuits and re-cast Ignatian spirituality for our times. He was a prisoner of Imperial Japan, a first responder when the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima, a pioneer of Catholic social justice and a founder of the Jesuit Refugee Service. His mind and heart were shaped by the Second Vatican Council. Few people-outside religious life-know his story. But now that the process for his beatification is underway, he will become known across the Catholic world and beyond. Best-selling author Brian Grogan SJ, whose life has been deeply influenced by Arrupe, has written Pedro Arrupe SJ: Mystic With Open Eyes. With a foreword by Peter McVerry SJ, this booklet is a guide to the extraordinary life of a great-souled human being. Arrupe belongs to the world because he had a profound love for everyone, especially the neediest. This succinct account of his life, 1907-1991, highlights his dynamic influence on the Church of today as it labours to build a civilisation of justice and love.

In the twentieth-century struggle for racial equality, there was perhaps no setting more fraught and contentious than the public schools of the American south. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1951, a student strike for better school facilities became part of the NAACP legal campaign for school desegregation. That step ultimately brought this rural, agricultural county to the Supreme Court of the United States as one of five consolidated cases in the historic 1954 ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Unique among those cases, Prince Edward County took the extreme stance of closing its public school system entirely rather than comply with the desegregation ruling of the Court. The schools were closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964, until the Supreme Court ruling in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County ordered the restoration of public education in the county. This historical anthology brings together court cases, government documents, personal and scholarly writings, speeches, and journalism to represent the diverse voices and viewpoints of the battle in Prince Edward County for-and against-educational equality. Providing historical context and contemporary analysis, this book offers a new perspective of a largely overlooked episode and seeks to help place the struggle for public education in Prince Edward County into its proper place in the civil rights era.

"The next time anyone asks me about heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, or anything related to what awaits us after our earthly lives have ended, I will recommend this excellent new book. Father Grogan's approach is wise without being preachy, scholarly without being overly academic and hopeful without being naive. Highly recommended." (James Martin, SJ)