Peter Faber

Peter Faber, also known as Pierre Favre, was born in 1506 in the mountain village of Villaret in the Duchy of Savoy, in the western Alps (now within the commune of Saint-Jean-de-Sixt in France). He came from a family of shepherds and spent much of his childhood tending flocks. From an early age he showed a marked desire for prayer and learning. In the mid-1520s he went to Paris to study at the University of Paris, entering the Collège Sainte-Barbe. There he roomed with Francis Xavier and later with Ignatius of Loyola, whose spiritual counsel and method of prayer shaped Faber’s vocation. He completed the Master of Arts around 1530 and then turned to theology.

Faber was the first of Ignatius’s companions to be ordained a priest, receiving holy orders in 1534. On 15 August 1534 he celebrated Mass at Montmartre for Ignatius and the other early companions as they took vows of poverty, chastity, and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, an act traditionally regarded as the beginning of the Society of Jesus. When the planned journey to the Holy Land proved impossible, the group offered itself to the pope. After papal approval of the Society in 1540, Faber served in Italy, including at Parma, and became known among the first Jesuits as an especially gifted director of the Spiritual Exercises.

Much of his remaining life was spent as a traveling preacher, confessor, and spiritual guide in a Europe divided by the Reformation. He was sent into the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire and worked in cities such as Speyer, Mainz, and Cologne. He took part in the religious colloquies of the early 1540s, including those associated with Worms and Regensburg, seeking conversion of heart rather than purely polemical victory. He also traveled in the Iberian Peninsula and helped draw later Jesuit figures, among them Peter Canisius, into the Society. His surviving Memoriale records his interior life, scruples, and devotion to the saints and angels, and it remains a principal source for his spirituality.

In 1546 Faber was called to serve as a theologian at the Council of Trent, but years of travel had weakened him. He died in Rome on 1 August 1546, at about forty years of age, before he could take his seat at the council. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria della Strada, later demolished to make way for the Church of the Gesù; his remains were transferred and subsequently lost. Pope Pius IX beatified him in 1872. In 2013 Pope Francis inscribed him among the saints by equivalent canonization, citing him as a model of gentle dialogue and discernment. The Society of Jesus keeps his feast on 2 August.