Loyola dies at sixty-four on July 31,…
July 1556 CE
Loyola dies at sixty-four on July 31, 1556, by which time the society, now more than one thousand members strong, has spread widely.
Three of the Jesuits’ twelve administrative units, called provinces, are in Italy, three are in Spain, two are in Germany, one is in France, one is in Portugal, and two are overseas in India and Brazil.
Ignatius and his order have become a major factor in the Counter-Reformation.
Besides his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius, whose great theme is the service of God and God's greater glory, also dictated an autobiography, wrote the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, and left several thousand letters.
Much occupied in his last years with Germany and India, to which he had sent his famous followers Peter Canisius and Francis Xavier, he also dispatches missionaries to the Congo region and to Ethiopia.
In Rome, where he dies, he has founded the Roman College and the Germanicum, a seminary for German candidates for the priesthood, also establishing a home for fallen women and one for converted Jews.