Birth and Infancy

Born in Viña del Mar (Chile), on January 22, 1901, Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga spent his childhood with his parents, Alberto Hurtado Larraín and Ana Cruchaga Tocornal and his only brother Miguel, younger by two years. They lived on the country estate of Fundo Mina Agua, near Casablanca. The death of his father in 1905 brought serious economic difficulties to the family, and later forced them to sell less valuable lands that were part of the family inheritance. For this reason, they moved to Santiago and not having a home of their own, began to live with a succession of different relatives. In 1909 Alberto entered St. Ignatius Academy and there made his first Holy Communion, receiving the sacrament of Confirmation the following year. Economic difficulties did not keep his mother, Ana Cruchaga, from working with the poorest in the Patronato San Antonio, founded by the Franciscan priest Luis Orellana. Alberto completed his studies at St. Ignatius in 1917.

«He was incapable of seeing pain without wanting to remedy it»

In March of 1918 he began his law studies at the Catholic University of Chile and involved himself intensely in university life, participating in the Law School’s Student Center. During those years he showed great concern for the poorest both in his apostolate with the Franciscans in the Patronato de Andacollo as well as in his political activity which he developed with evident social concern. He knew how to unite his own career with his desire to serve others and organized together with other law students, a legal bureau to counsel laborers. Augusto Salinas, one of his fellow students and the future Auxiliary bishop of Santiago, said of him: His life of union with Jesus Christ drew him to those who suffered. During the crisis among the nitrate miners he organized fellow students to serve these laborers who, having come to Santiago, were installed in precarious shelters.

Fr. Damian Symon, SS.CC., his spiritual director during those years, described him in these terms: “I met him when he was already a university student. The flowering and crystallization of his virtues was dazzling, particularly with respect to his charity which took the form of a compelling zeal which I had to moderate repeatedly to avoid exaggeration. He was incapable of seeing pain without wanting to remedy it, nor indeed any need, without seeking a way to solve it. He lived in an act of love of God, which translated constantly into one or another act of love for his neighbor, his zeal overflowed; it was nothing but the springboard of his love. His heart was like a boiling caldron that needed an escape valve.”

His social zeal brought him to participate in the Círculo de Estudios León XIII (Leo XIII Circle of Studies) where he read the social encyclicals with Fr. Fernández Pradel, S.J. and worked as a volunteer teacher in the Instituto Nocturno San Ignacio (St. Ignatius Night School) for the formation of laborers. Between August and November of 1920 he did his Military Service in the Yungay Regiment, which established headquarters in the old barracks of Buin in Santiago.

Vocational Discernment

Letters to his friend Manuel Larraín, the future bishop of Talca, are a testament to his profound efforts to discover the will of God. Both young men faced the same adventure with great seriousness, asking themselves: What is God asking of me? Alberto understood well that God assigns a place to each man and that, in that place, God will give abundant graces; for this reason he wrote this before the Lord: Take O Lord and receive all that I am and possess, I wish to give you all, to serve you with no restriction whatever in my total gift. Nevertheless, to discover where to serve the Lord was no easy task. Alberto also felt a call to marriage and to carry out an apostolate as a layman, among his laboring brothers. In 1923 Alberto wrote to his friend Manuel: “Pray with all your heart that we can arrange our affairs and that this year both of us can fulfill the will of God.” For him to fulfill the will of God meant to enter the Jesuit novitiate; for Manuel, it lay in entering the Major Seminary in Santiago.

However, Alberto could not enter the Jesuits because of his family’s economic difficulties. Fr. Damián Symon tells us how this was solved: “In the year 1923, during the entire month of the Sacred Heart, at ten o’clock every night, I saw him stretched out on the chapel floor before the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. He spent an entire hour of fervent prayer in this position imploring the Lord to solve his economic problems in order to make it possible for him to consecrate himself totally to God.” The solution came in a providential way, precisely on the feast of the Sacred Heart.

On August 7, 1923, after having presented his Licentiate thesis entitled: El trabajo a domicilio (Work in the home), he sat for his final exam in which he distinguished himself, receiving the highest evaluation by unanimous decision and with this, finally, his degree as a lawyer.

On the eve of his entering the Jesuit Novitiate, the University bade farewell to its former student. The sentiments of the academic community were well expressed in the Revista Universitaria which offers an invaluable contemporary documentation of those events. The article reads: “Having studied with splendid success for five years in the Faculty of Law and having obtained his law degree with the highest grade awarded by the Supreme Court and the unanimous distinction of the Catholic University, Alberto Hurtado, our friend, the friend of all Catholic youth and of the rich and the poor, left to enter the novitiate of the Society of Jesus. His immense love of God was rewarded by Divine Providence which gave him the merit of abandoning all when he could have possessed all. On the eve of his leaving, the Catholic University feels the need to bid a fond farewell to this exemplary former student with the celebration of Mass by our Rector and the participation of a numerous group of his friends” (Revista Universitaria, 1923). Alberto did not even wait to receive his diploma as a lawyer; he left for Chillan to begin his Novitiate on the 15th of August, the date he chose out of his love for Our Lady, a love he maintained for the duration of his life.