Alphonsus Rodriguez

Alphonsus Rodríguez (; 25 July 1532 – 31 October 1617) was a Spanish Jesuit religious brother who is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.

Life and work Rodríguez was the son of a wool merchant. When Peter Faber, one of the original Jesuits, visited the city to preach, the Rodríguez family provided hospitality to the Jesuit. Faber prepared the young Rodríguez for his First Communion.

At the age of twelve, Rodríguez was sent to the new Jesuit college at Alcalá, but left two years later to help his mother run the family business when his father died. At the age of 26, he married María Suarez, a woman of his own station, with whom he had three children. At the age of 31, she had died as did two of their children. From then on, Rodriguez began a life of prayer and mortification, separated from the world around him. On the death of his third child, his thoughts turned to life in some religious order.

Previous associations had brought him into contact with the first Jesuits who had come to Spain, Peter Faber among others, but it was apparently impossible to carry out his purpose of entering the Society as he was without education, having only an incomplete year at a new college begun at Alcalá by Francis Villanueva. At the age of 39 he attempted to make up this deficiency by following the course at the College of Barcelona, but without success. His austerities had also undermined his health. After considerable delay he was finally admitted into the Society of Jesus as a lay brother on 31 January 1571, at the age of 40.

The Vision of Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez by Francisco de Zurbarán. Rodriguez held deep devotion to the Sacred Heart He died on 31 October 1617.

He left a considerable number of manuscripts, some of which have been published as Obras Espirituales del B. Alonso Rodríguez (Barcelona, 1885, 3 vols., octavo, complete edition, 8 vols. in quarto). They are sometimes only reminiscences of domestic exhortations, the texts are often repeated, the illustrations are from everyday life, and the treatment of one virtue occasionally entrenches upon another. They were not written with a view to publication, but put down by Rodríguez himself, or dictated to others, in obedience to a positive command of his superiors. Pope Francis made reference to him in a list of Jesuit priests associated with devotion to the Sacred Heart in his 2024 encyclical letter on this subject, Dilexit nos.

There is a municipalité of Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez in Québec, Canada, and a parish dedicated to Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez in Woodstock, Maryland.

Rodríguez is the subject of a sonnet by fellow-Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, In honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez.