Renowned Jesuit missionary Fr Luis Ruiz Suarez SJ passed away at the age of 97 in Macau on 26 July 2011. Fr Louis Gendron SJ, Provincial of the Chinese Province, remembers his privileged encounters with Fr Ruiz, who he says enriched the name of “Ricci”.
Fr Luis Ruiz is the eldest member of the Chinese Province, born in 1913. I have had the privilege to get to know him somewhat, towards the end of his life. After being appointed provincial of the Chinese Province in 2005, I moved to the office in Macau, and there I met for the first time Fr Ruiz, who has been living in Macau since 1951! I remember a conversation we had in September of 2010, less than one year ago. He had one important message for me: “Please tell our local superior to let me go to China at least once every three months! I really need to go because I have to let our benefactors know the concrete situation of lepers in China, so that they will continue to support the work.”
Although he was almost 100 years old, Fr Ruiz knew a lot about what we now call “networking.” People need real stories (a bit like the pictures one posts on a blog) stories that move them and Fr Ruiz needed stories for his letters. He told me he had between 2000 and 3000 benefactor friends around the world, and each of his letters would go out in several different languages. He kept his network of friends alive for some 40 years! Many Jesuit “mission procurators” from different countries knew about Fr Ruiz (he once told me the names of six or seven of them) and some among them told me they were amazed by his fundraising ability. He was really the voice of the poor. Several times he told me “this is the money of the poor, wherever they are.” Each time there was a big natural calamity he would come to me and say, for instance: “They have got a terrible earthquake in Indonesia, why don’t we send US$100,000?”
n the same conversation, Fr Ruiz told me: “I am intellectually poor, but what I have I use for the poor.” Over the last few years, I realized that Fr Ruiz had a few basic principles to guide his life, principles which he repeated to me year after year. Basically three principles: “To make people happy is the best way to be happy.” He was indeed a happy man! Second principle: “If you want to help people, first you have to see with your own eyes.” The whole involvement with so many leprosaria in China began after he visited one leprosarium in Guangdong Province, because a Chinese priest had told him the situation was quite severe. His third principle: “Superiors are very busy, do not trouble them!” Interesting!
When Fr Ruiz first came to Macau in 1951 and for several years after that, the enclave city was full of refugees from China. Thousands of refugees were entering Macau, and the local government was sending them to him for food, lodging, clothes, etc. He took care of them for a couple of weeks, and then he had to tell them to move on, so that he could take new arrivals. In the evening he was teaching catechism, and 5000 people were baptized in Macau. Three hospices for elderly and physically/mentally challenged people were built, without him having to make special efforts at fundraising, because the money just kept coming! Then they started the Matteo Ricci School, mostly for refugees: he convinced two people to move out of a building so that the school could start, and he found a flat for them elsewhere.
When the situation in Macau became well under control, Fr Ruiz looked back to China Mainland again and found the lepers and their great needs. At the time he was already over 70 years old, and he threw himself completely into this new venture. “Casa Ricci Social Service” made friendly approaches to about one hundred leprosaria in remote mountain areas of ten different Chinese provinces. His goal was to change those dilapidated villages into dwellings worthy of human beings. He built roads, residences, schools, bridges, clinics. He installed waterways and electricity lines. He provided about 2000 annual scholarships for students, from kindergarten to university. He told me he never worried about money because it always came (“because the Lord cares”) and he used the resources generously, without calculating too much.
After about ten years, he had a great insight: invite religious Sisters to help. A few years later, he had more than 80 Sisters living together with the lepers in their villages. Normally there are three or four Sisters in one leprosarium. He told me that the whole atmosphere of a leprosarium completely changes once Sisters are living there. Sisters create what he calls “Oasis of love.”
In a more intimate sphere, Fr Ruiz told me that in order to live in the presence of God he repeats several times a day two Ignatian prayers: the “Suscipe” and the “Anima Christi.” Every evening he prepares the meditation and mass for the following day. After he gets up at 6:30 a.m., he prays until 9:00 a.m. and then he goes to celebrate the Eucharist for the Sisters and residents of the St. Aloysius Home in Taipa (and he did it practically until his death.) Very candidly he told me that once he starts praying, he often falls asleep. But this is OK: He is well in the hands of the Lord. “After all, I am a poor man, also in my prayer!”
Everybody in Macau knows about “Casa Ricci (Social Services).” I find it very interesting that Fr Ruiz has over the years enriched the name of “Ricci.” Matteo Ricci has always been identified with “scholar-missionaries”. But in Macau, the name “Ricci” has been enriched by a close association with “care for the refugees, the sick and the poor.” Matteo Ricci must be very grateful to Fr Luis Ruiz as they are now together.
Tributes from other Jesuits
In his homily at Fr Ruiz’s memorial mass on 3 August, Fr Fernando Azpiroz SJ described Fr Ruiz as an angel sent to reveal the presence of God. Read the homily.
Fr Michael Kelly SJ remembers him as ‘one of the greats’, a man who was a giant not because of his words, but because of the size of his heart. Read his blog.