Johannes Beck SJ (

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, 1 November 1922 – 9 May 2020) was a German Jesuit and social ethicist.

Life

Beck joined the

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

order in 1948. After the theological training he received, on 31 July 1956 he was ordained at the St. Michael's Church in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

. He was particularly involved in the worker and company pastoral care and campaigned for

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fu ...

and

Catholic social teaching Catholic social teaching, commonly abbreviated CST, is an area of Catholic doctrine concerning matters of human dignity and the common good in society. The ideas address oppression, the role of the state (polity), state, subsidiarity, social o ...

, in particular for the principle of solidarity in large industrial companies. Among other things, he served for many decades as a spiritual advisor to the Catholic Workers' Movement (KAB). As the successor to Franz Prinz SJ, he headed the Werkgemeinschaft christischer Arbeiter in

. From 1979 to 1991, Beck was director of the "Social Seminar" at Münchner Bildungswerk and after his retirement from 1991 to 2012 he was involved in teaching. He lived in the Jesuit community

Pedro Arrupe Pedro Arrupe Gondra, SJ (14 November 1907 – 5 February 1991) was a Spanish Basque priest who served as the 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983. He has been called a second founder of the Society, as he led the Jesu ...

in the St. Katharina Labouré nursing home in

Unterhaching Unterhaching (; Central Bavarian: ''Haching'') is the second largest municipality in the district of Munich in Bavaria, Germany, located to the south of Munich city centre and easily accessible via two federal motorways, Bundesautobahn 8 and Bunde ...

near Munich. He died in May 2020, at the age of 97 in Unterhaching,

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

, as a result of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

during the

COVID-19 pandemic in Germany The COVID-19 pandemic in Germany has resulted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths. On 27 January 2020, the first case in Germany was confirmed near Munich, Bavaria. By mid February, the arising cluster of cases had been fully containe ...

References

1922 births 2020 deaths 20th-century German Jesuits 21st-century German Jesuits Christian ethicists Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany {{Germany-bio-stub