Overview
- Catholic communities mark July 31 each year as the feast of San Ignacio de Loyola, the Spanish noble who died in Rome on July 31, 1556.
- A cannon-ball wound at Pamplona in 1521 forced a long recovery that led Ignacio to renounce a military career and begin a life of religious conversion.
- During a long retreat in Manresa he developed the Ejercicios Espirituales, a practical prayer and decision-making method widely used in retreats by both clergy and laypeople.
- Ignacio gathered companions while studying in Paris, including Francisco Javier and Pedro Fabro, and that group became the core of the Compañía de Jesús, which received papal approval in the 1530s–1540s in accounts that sometimes differ on exact dates.
- The Jesuits went on to play a central role in the Counter-Reformation and to build a global network of schools, universities and missions now present in more than 100 countries, shaping education and local communities around the world.