Blessed Inácio de Azevedo

Inácio de Azevedo, SJ (1526–1570) was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. He is one of the Forty Martyrs of Brazil, beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1854. He was born Dom Inácio de Azevedo de Ataíde Abreu e Malafaia in the city of Porto, probably in the first quarter of the year 1526. His family was prominent in the Portuguese nobility of that era. His father, Dom Manuel de Azevedo, was heir to two ancient feudal properties in northern Portugal, the honras of Barbosa and Ataíde. His mother, Dona Francisca de Abreu, was a daughter of the celebrated Portuguese poet and navigator, João Gomes de Abreu, and Dona Filipa de Eça. And one of his younger brothers, Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo, was captain-general of Portuguese Ceylon and viceroy of Portuguese India. He was an illegitimate son, legitimated by a Royal decree on July 22, 1539, as Dom Inácio de Ataíde (a surname of his grandmother - who was heiress of the honra of Ataíde - that he didn't use after joining the Jesuits) and educated at the Portuguese court of King John III. At the age of 18 he became administrator of his family's estate. However, after attending the sermons and speeches of Jesuit priest Francisco Estrada he chose to follow a religious career that would make him renounce his possessions, including his rights to the Feudal lordships of his father, in the northern Portuguese province of Entre Douro e Minho. In 1548 he made an irrevocable choice of religious life and entered the Society of Jesus where he was finally ordained in 1553. That same year he was nominated rector of the Jesuit college of Santo Antão, in Lisbon, an institution he would endow - 7 years later - with a sum of 600,000 reais. From the beginning of 1557 to February 1558 Azevedo was rector of the College of Arts in Coimbra and from 1560 to 1564 he was the dean of the Jesuit College of Saint Paul, in the city of Braga.