Ignatius of Loyola

Ignatius of Loyola was born in 1491 in Azpeitia, in the Basque country. He spent his youth at the court of the Catholic Monarchs and went on to devoted himself to military activity. Wounded during the war against France for the defense of the kingdom of Navarre, he spent a few months in convalescence, during which his conversion to the religious life took place through reading the books of the saints and the life of Christ. In 1522 he made a pilgrimage to Montserrat, and there began what, years later, would become the manual of the Spiritual Exercises. Little by little, he was joined by a group of religious who would constantly accompany him in later years, thus forming the nucleus of the Society of Jesus. All this happened only after Ignatius had decided to go to study in Paris and abandon the Spain, where the Inquisition had suspicions about the new form of preaching and teaching theology. Later, he moved to Rome with the idea of ??founding a new religious Order. The approval of Pope Paul III, in 1540, enabled the creation of the Society of Jesus and Ignatius was elected the first Superior General of the newly formed company and established its Constitutions, infusing the Order with a clear educational and missionary vocation and setting the Jesuits under the direct orders of the pope and his fight against heresy. Ignatius of Loyola died in Rome in 1556. He was beatified in 1609, while in 1622 he was declared a saint.

Read more:

• R. García Villoslada, San Ignacio de Loyola. Nueva biografía, Madrid 1986.
• T. Egido (coord.), Los Jesuitas en España y en el mundo Hispánico, Madrid 2004.