Saint John of Ávila

John of Ávila was born on January 6, 1499, in Almodóvar del Campo, in the province of Ciudad Real, Spain. He was the only son of Alfonso de Ávila, a descendant of Jewish converts, and Catalina Xixón, a wealthy and deeply pious couple. At fourteen, in 1513, he was sent to study Law at the famous University of Salamanca — but in 1517 he abandoned his studies without graduating and returned home.

The next three years were spent in an austere, recollected life of prayer. The young man’s holiness caught the attention of a Franciscan friar passing through Almodóvar; it was he who advised John to take up his studies again, this time at Alcalá de Henares, immersing himself in philosophy and theology. There he had the famous Dominican Domingo de Soto as his teacher. While he was studying, his parents passed away. Ordained a priest in the spring of 1526, he celebrated his first Mass in the very church where they were buried — then sold all of the family’s estate and gave the proceeds to the poor, in a gesture of self-emptying that sealed his total surrender to God.

Cut off from his natural ties, he felt called to the missions and set out for Seville in January 1527, intending to sail for Mexico with the Dominican Julián Garcés, who was to become the first bishop of Tlaxcala. But God had other plans: the devotion he showed in celebrating Mass and his uncommon gift for preaching and catechizing caught the attention of Hernando de Contreras and, through him, of the Archbishop of Seville and Inquisitor General, Alonso Manrique de Lara. The archbishop saw in this young man a powerful instrument for reviving the Christian faith in Andalusia, and after much insistence he managed to convince him to give up the voyage to America. Still in 1527, at the request of the young Sancha Carrillo, sister of one of his disciples, he began writing Audi, filia (“Listen, daughter”), a work he would continue expanding until the end of his life.

His first sermon in Andalusia was preached on July 22, 1529 — and it was enough to establish his reputation as an extraordinary orator. For nine years the churches were packed to hear him. But his radical call for reform and his denunciations of the conduct of the aristocracy came at a price: in 1531 he was denounced to the Inquisition of Seville, and in the summer of 1532 he was arrested, accused of exaggerating the dangers of wealth and of “shutting heaven against the rich.” After the charges were refuted, he was declared innocent and released in July 1533. At the end of 1534 or beginning of 1535, he was incardinated into the Diocese of Córdoba, which became the base from which he directed his disciples and traveled across Andalusia, founding schools and colleges in cities such as Granada, Baeza, Montilla, and Zafra. In 1538, by a bull of Pope Paul III, the University of Baeza was founded, with John as its first rector — and it became a model for the formation of clergy. Around that same time he also received the title of Master of Sacred Theology, probably at Granada.

He died at Montilla on May 10, 1569, after spending more than forty years pouring himself out for the souls of Andalusia. The Church recognized him as the “Apostle of Andalusia,” and he was proclaimed a saint and Doctor of the Church for his solid and luminous spiritual doctrine, mirrored in works such as the aforementioned Audi, filia.