July 31st. St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Born at Loyola in the Basque country on Northern Spain in 1491, he served as a soldier until wounded in the siege of Pamplona in 1521. Having not previously taken his faith seriously, he came to his love of God during his convalescence, when he was given a Life of Christ and the Saints to read. He spent a year in prayerful penance at Manresa, close to the famous Catalan abbey of Montserrat, and then embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Having been dissuaded from trying to convert Moslems, he could not at first find his true spiritual vocation. He studied at several Spanish universities and finally in Paris, where he discerned that he had the gift of helping those in spiritual trouble. He was joined by six others (including St. Francis Xavier) who were to be the core of the Jesuits. They undertook his famous 'Spiritual Exercises', which he had begun to form during his time as a hermit, were ordained, an offered themselves to the Pope to serve in any way he desired. They bound themselves by vows taken before the crucifix of St. Brigid in the Basilica of St.Paul-outside-the-Walls, Rome. Such were the origins of the Jesuits, priests of a religious Order living in community, devoted to education and spiritual direction, but - unusually for the time - exempt from the communal singing of the Divine Office, so as to leave themselves free to follow their particular responsibilities. The Jesuits were of particular influence in Counter-Reformation Germany, in the survival of Catholicism in England, and in the spread of the faith in Latin America. Organisation and discipline were their strong points, though some less favourable towards them saw them as a kind of army, and at one stage they were suppressed; their very influential schools also tended to swamp those of smaller teaching Orders. St. Ignatius himself died in 1556 and was canonised in 1622.