Pierre Favre (Peter Faber) was born on April 13, 1506 at Villaret in Savoy to a Savoyard peasant family. Sent by his family to the University of Paris in 1525, Peter shared the student-lodging with Francis Xavier at the Collège Sainte-Barbe.
In 1529, the room-mate arrangement was joined by the new arrival Ignatius Loyola — the personal-Providential encounter that would produce the Society of Jesus.
Peter received the Spiritual Exercises from Ignatius during their Paris student years (1533–1534), and was ordained priest on May 30, 1534 — the first priest of the nascent Jesuit brotherhood. On August 15, 1534, at the Chapel of Saint Denys on Montmartre in Paris, Peter celebrated the Mass at which the Seven Original Companions took the Montmartre Vows — the institutional founding-moment of the Society of Jesus.
Peter undertook the northern-European Catholic Reformer ministry — serving as theological consultor at the Colloquy of Worms (1540), the Diet of Regensburg (1541), and the Jesuit missions to Germany, Spain, and Portugal.
He was called by Paul III to attend the Council of Trent as papal theologian — but died at Rome on August 1, 1546 on the eve of departure. Canonized by Pope Francis on December 17, 2013.