His father, Dom Manuel de Azevedo,[2] was heir to two ancient feudal properties in northern Portugal, the honras of Barbosa and Ataíde.

However, after attending the sermons and speeches of Jesuit priest Francisco Estrada he chose to follow a religious career that would make him renounce his possessions, including his rights to the Feudal lordships of his father, in the northern Portuguese province of Entre Douro e Minho.

But Dom Manuel de Azevedo's health proved to be robust - and he only agreed to make a special bequest to his son of 1,500 cruzados, to be paid during a period of three years, after 1560.

In his final report, Inácio de Azevedo asked for more people to be sent to the missions and Borgia duly gave him broad powers to recruit new elements for the Jesuits in Brazil.

During the trip to Brazil, on July 15, 1570, while sailing near the Canary Islands, the Santiago was attacked and captured by a fleet led by the French Huguenot corsair Jacques de Sores off Fuencaliente Lighthouse.

[1] The death of Inácio de Azevedo and his 39 companions on their voyage to Brazil at the hands of Calvinist corsairs was the biggest collective martyrdom of missionaries of the modern era and had great repercussion in the Europe of the time, torn by wars of religion and with a Catholic church strongly committed to developing its missions in America, Asia and Africa.

The human and material loss of the martyrdom of Azevedo and his companions was certainly a momentary setback for the Jesuits in their project of conversion to Catholicism of the Brazilian Indians.

However, the will to emulate the "forty martyrs of Brazil" soon gave rise to a new impulse and vitality in the movement for the overseas missions to which Inácio de Azevedo dedicated much of his life.