St. Ignatius of Loyola

July 31 is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Society of Jesus and the author of the Spiritual Exercises. Born Iñigo López de Oñate at the castle of Loyola, in the Basque country, he was a soldier wounded by a cannonball at the siege of Pamplona in 1521. During his convalescence at Loyola he read the lives of the saints, and the experience that followed — the discernment of spirits that became the method of the Exercises — turned him from a soldier of the king to a soldier of Christ.

Ignatius gathered companions at Paris, where he studied from 1528 to 1535, and with them took vows at Montmartre in 1534. The Society of Jesus was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, and Ignatius was elected its first Superior General. He spent the rest of his life at Rome, governing the Society and writing its Constitutions. The Spiritual Exercises — the manual of the four-week retreat he composed between 1522 and 1548 — became the most influential Catholic spiritual text of the modern age.

Ignatius died at Rome on July 31, 1556, and his body lies in the Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Society, in the chamber behind the high altar. He was canonized in 1622, with Teresa of Ávila, Francis Xavier, and Philip Neri. From Loyola, where he was converted, to Paris, where he gathered his companions, to Rome, where he governed the Society, the July 31 feast is the feast of the founder of the Jesuits.