Saint Ignaius: The Roman Catholic Church

Jesuits are the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order of priests and brothers founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. After being seriously wounded in the Battle in 1521, he underwent a spiritual conversion while in recovery from his injuries to leave his military life and devote himself to labor for God, following the example of Francis of Assisi. Between 1524 and 1537, Ignatius studied theology and Latin in at university in Spain and then in Paris. Ignatius emerged as a religious leader during the Counter-Reformation and in 1534; he arrived in the Paris during a period of anti-Protestant turmoil which forced John Calvin to flee France. Ignatius and a few collect friends bound themselves by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and in
The Society is divided into 83 Provinces with six Independent Regions and ten Dependent Regions. As of 2007, they were in 112 nations on six continents with the largest number in India and the USA. Their average age was 57.3 years: 63.4 years for priests, 29.9 years for scholastics, and 65.5 years for brothers. Jesuits are known by its various ministries in the fields of missionary work, human rights, social Justice and, most notably, higher education. It operates colleges and universities in various countries around the world and is particularly active in the Philippines and India. Currently in the United States it maintains 28 colleges/universities and 58 high
For five years, 1566-1571, members of the Peruvian province worked among among the Indians along the east coast of Florida where Father Martines was massacred near St. Augustine in 1566. They penetrated into Virginia, where eight of the fathers by Indians at a station named Axaca, supposed to be on the Rappahannock River. Later, Jesuits moving down from Canada taking as their share of the Louisianan territory the Illinois country and afterwards from the Ohio River to the gulf east of the Mississippi, worked among the Chocktaw, Chickasaw, Natchez, and Yazoo. The Jesuits were often the only force standing between the Native Americans and slavery. In 1626 Fathers Isaac Jogues and John Lalnade brought the Jesuit approach to Huron in Canada and upstate New York. They were killed Iroquois Indians in 1646 and followed by Fahter Jarquette who explored and evangelized in the Great Lakes region, while Father Eusebino Kino as in the southwest doing the same thing. Father Sebastion Rale worked among Abanaki tribe in Maine and it was among them that he died at the hands of British colonists. For more than a hundred years in America, Jesuits operated under the auspices of their native provinces in Europe. Jesuits administered early Catholic churches such as the brick chapel at St. Mary’s City; site of the first settlement in Maryland establishing the province here in the United States as well