Ignatius: A Leader Twice Born

By:  Lester C. Yee

St. Ignatius of Loyola was born to a minor noble family in a Tiny Basque village. The teenage Ignatius served as a page to the chief treasurer of the Royal Court which served as his apprenticeship for a military and courtly career. Ignatius was even arrested once for misdemeanors that the local magistrate called outrageous. His military career ended when a cannon ball shattered his leg while he was leading the defense of a Spanish garrison in Pamplona against the French.

Ignatius however refused to surrender his military and courtly aspirations.  As Chris Lowney in his book Heroic Leadership puts it, “one imagines a self-taught ‘surgeon’ gamely hacking away at the offending tibia with the sharpest available local excuse for a saw, and it’s safe to assume that there was no anesthesiologist at hand”.

While recuperating from his surgery and injuries, Ignatius wanted to read chivalrous stories about knights but the only books in the castle then were about Jesus and the saints. These stories challenged Ignatius to imitate and beat the heroic deprivation of the saints. Thus, Ignatius began his journey alone into Jerusalem, begging for alms along the way. “A profound and permanent religious conversion during his sickness gave Ignatius a spiritual destination, but translating that goal into mature, sensible engagement in the everyday world proved a long, drawn-out and torturous process.

And at last, at forty years old, St. Ignatius studied Basic Latin grammar with a class of pre-teen boys. This would be the beginning of the path of Ignatius’ lifelong calling.

In the years that followed, St. Ignatius would form the Society of Jesus, which was first composed of St. Francis Xavier, Blessed Peter Faber and other companions Ignatius met while he was studying in the University of Paris. The Society of Jesus counts among its members saints like Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, Stanislaus Kostka, Aloysius Gonzaga, John Berchmanns, some of the 120 Chinese martyrs, and some of the Japanese martyr-saints.

The Jesuits (members of the Society of Jesus) would also be responsible in establishing and running the best schools in the world, among them Fordham University in the United States and our very own Ateneo de Manila University.