Shock Troops for the Papacy

Alongside the Council of Trent, the formation of the Society of Jesus provided the equally significant event of the Counter-Reformation. The Jesuits, as they came to be called, under the leadership and discipline of Ignatius Loyola, the first General of the order, placed themselves solely at the direction of the papacy to achieve the objective of undermining and reversing the impact of the Protestant Reformation. The efforts of the Jesuits in education and in darker, far less noble endeavors were always with the aim of stopping defections of Roman Catholics to Protestantism and of bringing lapsed Roman Catholics back to the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. Those efforts continue to this day and have had a powerful impact on the development of South and Central America and on the southwestern region of the United States.