A Polish Jesuit priest based in Melbourne has created a board game that connects players with the life and spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola. Source: Melbourne Catholic.
Fr Mariusz Han released the game, Ignatius Loyola: Knight and Pilgrim, last year. It has been well received, even winning an international Jesuit award.
Fr Han has always been a “gamer” in the more traditional sense. Born in 1971 in Wroclaw, south-west Poland, he experienced the final 16 years of communist rule in his country.
He and his brother nurtured their spirit of play and creativity by constantly making different games with what supplies they had, often creating clay soldiers and tanks and trading them with each other.
The idea for this board game came to Fr Han during the COVID lockdowns – a large portion of which was a jubilee year for Jesuits.
“We had the 500th anniversary of the battle of Pamplona in 2021,” he says, referring to the battle in which St Ignatius had his leg broken by a cannonball, changing his life forever, “and then the 400th anniversary of the canonisation of St Ignatius in 2022. We tried to finish by the end of the jubilee year [of] his canonisation, but COVID ended and work started, 10 times more intensive than before. We finished it in 2023, a little bit late.”
Fr Han worked on the game with his brother in Poland. The game took three years in total to develop, partly because of the time difference between Melbourne and his home country.
Fr Han said that while it is a fun and engaging game, it is also educational, a chance to introduce younger people to the great Spanish saint who, he says, changed the Church.
“His was a beautiful life, an amazing life, when you read his story … This man, his spirituality, changed the Church, changed everything.”
Details: Ignatius Loyola: Knight and Pilgrim
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Board game brings St Ignatius’ story to life for a new generation (By Christian Bergmann, Melbourne Catholic)
