Loyola, Saint Ignatius

Loyola, Saint Ignatius of

 orig. Iñigo de Oñaz y Loyola

(born 1491, Loyola, Castile—died July 31, 1556, Rome; canonized March 12, 1622, feast day July 31) Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Born into the nobility, he began his career as a soldier. While convalescing from wounds inflicted by a French cannonball in 1521, he experienced a religious conversion. After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he pursued religious studies in Spain and France. In Paris he gathered about him the companions (including St. Francis Xavier) who were to join him in founding the Jesuits. He was ordained a priest in 1537 and established the Society of Jesus in 1539. The new order received papal approval in 1540, and Loyola served as its general until his death, by which time it had branches in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Portugal, India, and Brazil. Loyola described his mystical vision of prayer in The Spiritual Exercises. In his last years he laid the foundations of a system of Jesuit schools.