Born eight years after the Columbus discovery of America in 1492, he was a friend of St.Ignatius of Loyola the founder of the Jesuits and an adviser to St.Teresa the reformer of the Carmelites. He was in a sense overshadowed by these and others from among the wealth of outstanding religious figures of Spain’s ‘Golden Age’. He was canonised a saint in 1970.

He is famous for his outstanding preaching. His sermons survive only in the form of notes made by some of those who heard them but spiritual letters he wrote are still in their original form. John of Avila was one of the few saints in his time in Spain who did not belong to a religious order.