Anniversary of St Ignatiusâ encounter with a cannonball
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20 May marks the five hundredth anniversary of a chance event with large consequences. In 1620 a stray cannonball ricocheting off a castle wall in a minor skirmish broke the leg of a knight defending the castle. The cannonball, a symbol of the knightâs culture, also represented in its errant path the fracture of the ties that bound him to that culture. It had large consequences for him and for the world. The long convalescence of Ignatius Loyola after the siege of Pamplona changed the direction of his life and shaped the church and world that we inherited.