31st July - S

31st July - S: Founder of the Jesuits. St Ignatius was born in 1491, the youngest son of a Basque nobleman. As a young man he was a soldier and was wounded at the Battle of Pamplona against the French. During a long convalescence he read the lives of the saints, and decided to dedicate himself to God. After a year's retreat at Manresa in Catalonia he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then from 1524 to 1534 he studied, beginning with Latin grammar with the schoolboys of Barcelona and ending by earning his Master of Arts degree at the University of Paris, at the age of 43.