There are a lot of famous Jesuit saints, many of whom you know by just one name: Ignatius, Xavier, Canisius, Gonzaga, the list goes on. But there are countless holy Jesuits (and other Ignatian-inspired women and men of faith) whose incredible stories aren’t as well-known. Despite their lower profiles, their lives of heroic virtue can inspire us today as we seek to follow Christ more closely. So we asked the writer Meg Hunter-Kilmer to introduce us to 10 of these “friends of Ignatius.”
Hunter-Kilmer is a renowned American Catholic writer whose work on saints has been featured in her books “Saints Around the World” and “Pray for Us: 75 Saints Who Sinned, Suffered, and Struggled on Their Way to Holiness.” She picked 10 women and men from the wide Ignatian family whose causes for sainthood have officially been opened.
Each essay in this series, which will run monthly, is accompanied by an original artwork of the featured friend of Ignatius.
Venerable Ignacia del Espíritu Santo
Ven. Ignacia del Espíritu Santo (Philippines, 1663-1748) wouldn’t let racist laws destroy her vocation. If the established orders wouldn’t let her in, she would start her own. If the powers that be wouldn’t call hers a religious community, no matter. Ignacia and her sisters knew who they were — and whose they were — and that was enough.
Born to a Filipina mother and a Chinese father who had immigrated to the Philippines, Ignacia was baptized as an infant, her parents’ first child and the only one to survive infancy. She learned basic catechism at her parish, but the local schools were only for Spaniards, so Ignacia had little formal education.
Ignacia felt called to religious life, but it was illegal at the time for Filipinos to enter religious orders (even the one that had been operating in the Philippines for 60 years). Despite the impossibility — and despite her parents’ expectations that she would marry at 21 — Ignacia felt drawn to religious life.
She sought guidance from a Jesuit priest from Bohemia, Fr. Paul Klein (or Pablo Clain), who led her through Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. This time of intense prayer left Ignacia even more convicted that she was being called to consecrated life, whatever the racist laws might have said. So, she left home (with only a needle and a pair of scissors to her name) and moved into a house behind the Jesuit headquarters, where she began to live an unofficial religious life. At first Ignacia lived alone but she was soon joined by three companions who followed the informal rule she had devised with the help of Fr. Klein (and the inspiration of the Spiritual Exercises). Their life wasn’t easy; even with Ignacia’s skills as a seamstress they earned little money and often had to beg. They used banana leaves for plates and ate outside on moonlit nights to save money on oil for their lamps. And though the records say nothing about what they suffered from racist opposition to their community, one can imagine that it was persistent and discouraging.
But difficult as their life was, their total dedication to the Lord was attractive. Despite the ban on Filipino vocations, God was still calling Filipinos to give their lives to him, and some were willing to defy local statutes in order to follow him. At age 25, Mother Ignacia was leading a community of nearly 30 women!
Though segregation was the rule of the day, Mother Ignacia accepted both Filipinas and mixed-race women into her community and even the Spaniards who were at the top of the racial hierarchy (though the 1726 constitutions required that Spanish women’s admission be voted on by the other members of the community). The community was known as the Beatería de la Compañía de Jesús (“the Convent of the Jesuits”), and the women who followed Mother Ignacia were called beatas.
Mother Ignacia emphasized the importance of silence, saying that the sisters must observe complete silence (other than specified times for recreation) lest their hearts grow cold. The beatas were encouraged to look to the cross as the source of their strength. For Mother Ignacia, the cross was so central that she often carried a literal cross to unite her sufferings to Christ’s.
In addition to their life of prayer, the beatas also took in students as boarders, providing schooling to an integrated group of young women who would otherwise have had little chance at an education. Just as subversive was their mission of offering retreats to women, at a time when the only laypeople who went on retreat were men. But though it was a new concept, the retreats became quite popular among people of every ethnic background. Up to 250 women would attend each eight-day session of the Spiritual Exercises, which the beatas preached in both English and Tagalog; even the wife of the governor of Manila once attended!
But despite their rule of life and their work to serve the community, for 50 years this was technically an informal association; the law continued to forbid people of color from entering religious life. Mother Ignacia’s evident holiness was a compelling argument, though, and the local hierarchy gradually became sympathetic to her work. But it wasn’t until 1732 that Mother Ignacia and her 80-some beatas were finally given diocesan approval and the Religious of the Virgin Mary (their new name) became the first order to accept native Filipina women. Barred from religious life by racist laws and policies for 111 years (since the first women’s religious community in the Philippines was founded in 1621), Filipinas were finally able to become sisters.
Mother Ignacia was now 69 years old and had spent 48 years living as a religious sister without official recognition. Having secured a future for the beatas, Mother Ignacia stepped down as superior a few years later and lived the rest of her life as a simple sister. Though she had spent decades fighting for the rights of Filipina women (in her quiet but relentless way), she didn’t cling to power but humbly stepped aside, spending her last years in submission to the superiors she had once mentored. She died on her knees at the altar rail, having just received Communion.
The beatas’ status remained uncertain for two centuries following Mother Ignacia’s death. In 1755 the king of Spain granted the women protection but specified that they were not a religious order. When the Jesuits were expelled from the Philippines from 1768-1859, the beatas suffered without their spiritual fathers. But still they carried on, living and praying and serving as religious even if they weren’t recognized as such. They formed and taught young women and hosted retreats, even without Jesuits to lead them.
After the suppression of the Jesuits ended, they began to found houses throughout the Philippines, generally to serve girls alongside communities of Jesuits who were serving young boys. It wasn’t until the end of Spanish colonial rule that the beatas were allowed to be an official religious congregation and not until the mid-20th century that the Religious of the Virgin Mary became a congregation of pontifical right.
Today there are more than 700 of Mother Ignacia’s sisters (mostly Filipinas) working in nearly a dozen countries and running some five dozen schools and a university, all because Venerable Ignacia del Espíritu Santo refused to let racist policies dictate to her. She went around the law until she could convince people to change the law, making a space for herself and her people rather than waiting to be given one. And because of her heart for justice and her love of Jesus, the Philippines — and the world — are forever changed.
