John of Ávila

Born around 1499 at Almodóvar del Campo into a wealthy family of Jewish converts, he abandoned law at Salamanca for theology at Alcalá. Ordained priest in 1526, he sold his inheritance, gave it to the poor and set out for the Indies; the archbishop of Seville kept him in Andalusia, where he would preach for nearly forty years. His preaching against money and privilege had him denounced to the Inquisition in 1531 and imprisoned at Seville in the autumn of 1532: he emerged acquitted on 5 July 1533, and more listened to than before. He founded colleges and a university at Baeza, wrote the *Audi, filia* — a treatise on the spiritual life he would revise all his days — and became the counsellor of a whole generation: Teresa of Ávila submitted her autobiography to him for his judgment, John of God was converted after hearing him, Francis Borgia consulted him. He died at Montilla in 1569, worn out and ill for years. Beatified in 1894 and canonised in 1970, he was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Benedict XVI in 2012.