San Ignacio de Loyola church

You’ve reached the beautiful all-white church of San Ignacio de Loyola. If the name Ignatius Loyola rings a bell, then you’ll probably know this church must have some connection with the Jesuits; you see, Ignatius was a Spanish soldier who rose to become the religious leader of the Counter-Reformation movement and founder of the Jesuit Order. The edifice before you is in fact the oldest surviving Catholic church in Buenos Aires. The first Jesuits arrived in Argentina in 1608. They had neither bricks nor stones, so they decided to build a church from cob and straw on the Plaza de Mayo, known back then as the Plaza Mayor. This little church of rammed earth stood where the Metropolitan Cathedral is today, and remained there for a good fifty years. Then in 1661, a wealthy heiress donated this very site to the Jesuit Order. This time, they had brick kilns, so they got to build the first big Jesuit church. Construction wrapped up in 1722, and by 1734, the church was consecrated in that typical Counter-Reformation baroque style. Fast forward to 1955, and San Ignacio de Loyola, along with many other churches, went up in flames during a firestorm of protests over some serious political events, including the heated debate over the separation of Church and State. Mind you, this issue is still not settled today; a campaign to revisit the separation of church and state was launched in 2018, but it was rejected by Congress. Thankfully, the church was fully restored since then and it’s now one of the few remaining vestiges of pre-19th-century colonial Buenos Aires. It’s definitely worth checking out!