St. Ignatius of Loyola

St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) was born Íñigo López de Loyola at his family's castle in the Basque country of northern Spain, the youngest of a large noble family. He grew up dreaming of courtly honor and military glory, and served as a soldier until 1521, when a French cannonball shattered his leg at the siege of Pamplona. During a long and painful convalescence, with only a life of Christ and a book of the lives of the saints to read, he noticed that worldly daydreams left him dry while thoughts of serving God left lasting peace. That simple observation became the seed of his celebrated discernment of spirits. After his recovery he hung up his sword at the Marian shrine of Montserrat and spent nearly a year in prayer and severe penance at Manresa, where he underwent profound spiritual trials and graces. Out of that experience grew the Spiritual Exercises, a structured school of prayer and discernment ordered to finding and choosing the will of God. Already a grown man, he went back to the classroom to study Latin with schoolboys, and eventually took his studies to the University of Paris. In Paris he gathered companions — among them St. Francis Xavier and Bl. Peter Faber — and in 1534, at Montmartre, the group vowed poverty, chastity, and apostolic service. In 1540 Pope Paul III approved their new religious order, the Society of Jesus, and Ignatius was elected its first superior general. From a small room in Rome he directed a rapidly growing company of Jesuits who founded schools, undertook missions from Brazil to Japan, and served the pope wherever the need was greatest, all under the motto Ad maiorem Dei gloriam — for the greater glory of God. Ignatius died in Rome on July 31, 1556, by which time the Society numbered around a thousand members. He was canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, in the famous ceremony that also raised Francis Xavier, Teresa of Ávila, and Philip Neri to the altars. His feast is July 31, and he is a patron of soldiers, retreats, and the Society of Jesus. His tomb may be visited in the Church of the Gesù in Rome, and the Sanctuary of Loyola in Spain, built around his birthplace, remains a major pilgrimage destination — as does the Manresa cave where the Exercises were born.