An Ignatian Trip

As part of the Ateneo Law School’s (ALS) Faculty Development Program, twenty-five members of the Ateneo Law School faculty journeyed to Bilbao, Spain last July 11 to 14, 2023. Acknowledging their deep common history and mission with their Filipino counterparts, administrators and faculty members of the law school of Deusto University (Deusto), led by Dean Gema Tomás and Vice Dean Felipe Gómez, graciously hosted the ALS delegation during the four day trip.  Deusto is a fellow Jesuit educational institution and is the oldest private university in Spain having opened in 1886.

The ALS delegation was invited to attend the investiture rites of the administrative team of the University’s recently elected Rector, Fr. Juan José Etxebarria SJ held in the university’s stately paraninfo (auditorium) which was followed by a reception which provided the ALS faculty the opportunity to socialize with various professors and administrators of Deusto, including the new Rector.

A tour of the Deusto campus ensued which saw the ALS faculty overwhelmed by impressive facilities such as its Gothic chapel and majestic assembly hall where doctoral theses defense sessions are held. The campus tour was capped with a meeting  among the ALS and Deusto law school faculty members wherein thoughts and ideas on potential collaborative undertakings between the two institutions, including legal research and student and faculty mobility programs, were exchanged.

Apart from the City of Bilbao, Deusto (inclusive of its law school) has another campus located in the City of San Sebastian, also in the Basque Country. The ALS team was also given a tour of the avant-garde San Sebastian campus with young law school professors and Dean Tomás herself personally leading the ALS group in and around their Deusto San Sebastian campus as well as the City of San Sebastian.

While the networking with their Deusto mission partners was itself a source of great fulfillment for the ALS faculty, unanimously considered as the high point and most emotionally moving part of the trip was the visit to the birthplace and residence of St. Ignatius in Loiola in the Municipality of Azpeitia, some 45 minutes from the City of Bilbao. The visit to St. Ignatius’s home was enhanced by a guided tour led by Jesuit priest Fr. Peo who spoke not only of the residence but of the life and journey of Iñigo de Loyola from his age of vanity to his conversion after he was injured in battle in Pamplona.

The ALS group thereafter celebrated an intimate, community mass at the Chapel of the Conversion, which is located in the very room where St. Ignatius converted after reading two books, “Life of Christ” and “Flowers of the Saints” while recuperating. Fr. IJ Chan-Gonzaga SJ presided over this special mass with a homily that reinvigorated the ALS faculty’s commitment to its Ignatian mission.

Indeed, this trip was a very Ignatian one.