Joop Beek

Who was Joop Beek?

Josephus Beek SJ was a Dutch and later Indonesian Jesuit, priest, educator and politician. From approximately 1965 until approximately 1975 he was a very important political consultant to the Indonesian president Soeharto, but always remained in the shade.

Joop Beek grew up in Amsterdam in a family with Indonesian connections. In 1935, he entered the Jesuit order in Mariëndaal in Grave in the Netherlands. In 1938, as was usual in this religious order, he was transferred to work in a Jesuit college, in his case in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. During the Second World War he was interned by the Japanese until 1945, and come liberation he was held for seven more months by the Indonesians. In 1946, he returned to the Netherlands, to Maastricht, to study for priesthood, was ordained in 1948 and again sent to Yogyakarta, where he stayed until 1959. Here he also started setting up catholic student organisations, that would prove the basis for his later political influence.