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On April 27, 1572, an eager young Jesuit named José de Acosta Porres disembarked from a Spanish ship onto the soil of Lima, Peru. He had most recently spent several months in Santa Domingo, having traveled from Spain three months earlier. By everyone's account this young man was exactly what the new emerging order, the Compañía de Jesús, the Society of Jesus, hoped for-a supremely trained, profoundly devout agent of ecclesial renewal who would help foster in those he taught a learned piety. José de Acosta Porres seemed bound before birth to be a Jesuit. Born in 1540, the year Ignatius of Loyola's dream of an order received papal approval in the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae, José de Acosta enjoyed a family life that reflected the doctrine of providence [1] His father, Don Antonio de Acosta, was a wealthy merchant in Medina del Campo, the commercial center of Castile, and he, along with José's mother, Doña Ana de Porres, was deeply committed-body, soul, and money-to the Society of Jesus.
[1]: Claudio M. Burgaleta, José de Acosta, S. J. (1540–1600): His Life and Thought (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1999). John W. O'Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).