St Ignatius Loyola and the midlife journey
Just 500 years ago, on 20 May 1521, a cannonball fired by the French forces storming a fortress in Pamplona ricocheted off a nearby wall and shattered the right leg of Ignatius of Loyola. The injury put an end to his career as soldier and diplomat.
After surviving several operations and a long convalescence, Ignatius left home for seventeen years of travel to his final home in Rome as superior general of a new religious order, the Society of Jesus or Jesuits. Often described as the time of his religious conversion and spiritual growth, these years make up the
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.