Ireland - Sant’Isidoro a Capo le Case

In 1622, some Franciscans of Spanish origin acquired the land where the church stands today, in order to begin the construction of a holy place dedicated to Saint Isidore, the peasant saint of Madrid, who had just recently been canonised by Pope Gregory XV. Two years later, however, the church had still not been completed, and so Brother Luke Ward and his Irish Franciscan companions, who had fled their native country to escape persecution by the Protestants, bought and transformed the neighbouring buildings into a college which, to this day, is managed by the community. For this reason, the church very soon became the national church of the Irish in Rome.