Paul de Chauvigny de Blot, Jesuit, Professor of busines sspirituality

Paul de Blot was a member of the well-known Indonesian Eurasian family Chauvigny de Blot with roots in Protestant France (Huguenots). He was born15 May 1924 in Kotawinangun, a small village in Central Java, Kebumen. In 1948 he entered the Jesuit society in Muntilan, ordained a priest in 1960 after study of theology and chemistry. In 1965 he became in Yogyakarta and Semarang a proponent of a softer approach of 'ex-Communists' than the hard line of fellow Jesuit Joop Beek in Jakarta. I wrote about an interview on 11 September 2012, where he told me that he 'could plea for the discharge of those suspects that he deemed to be innocent' to Colonel Soetopo Joewono, then still army commander of Central Java in Semarang (and later head of BAKIN intelligence. See  Catholics in Independent Indonesia, 154-156).  There was even a Komando Operasi Mental, for the promotion of the true meaning of Pancasila as the Indonesian State philosophy of harmony.

In 1978 he came to the Netherlands where he was active in the counseling of students, especially at the business school of Nyenrode. He became after 2006 an Honorary Professor of Business Spirituality. He could proudly say that his way of talking about this subject was not esoteric, even not religious, but that it was a universal guideline to become rich, successful and happy, without hurting other people. Business not as a warfare but a way to common happiness for mankind. Always calm and smiling, he quietly talked to Indonesian visitors about the time of horror, the killing of so many suspected Communists as a disaster that had hit Indonesians as a nation, without too much blaming individual persons. Journalists and students who came for information about the notorious Jesuit Joop Beek, found a smiling but rather silent fellow Jesuit.