Mary is at the origin of Saint Ignatius’ conversion

He was awake one night and clearly saw an image of the Madonna and Child; from this vision, which lasted for a considerable period of time, he received a very excessive consolation and he remained with such disgust for all his past life, and especially for the things of the flesh, that it seemed to him that all the images previously painted there had been removed from his soul.

Thus from that hour until August 1533, when this is written, he never again had "even the slightest consent to the things of the flesh…" Without indicating the origin of this vision, he simply noted its fruits and the fact that, in the straightforward way it was written, it has never been put in doubt.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Taken from the saint’s autobiography that he wrote after nine months of convalescence, beginning in March 1522 in Manresa, near the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat (Spain, diocese of Barcelona), following a war wound.

Autobiography : A Pilgrim's Journe

Quoted in Dictionnaire des Apparitions de l’Abbé Laurentin, Fayard 2007