A mystical theologian, he was born at Waterford, Kingdom of Ireland, in 1591, and died in Mexico, New Spain, where he had spent over 20 years as a missionary, on 12 or 18 December 1644.
[5] After two years at the novitiate in Villagarcia, he pursued his theological studies and was ordained a priest, after which he obtained permission to go to the Jesuit missions of Mexico.
[6] Wadding was then assigned to serve in the Jesuit mission in Sinaloa, and in 1620 he worked among the Mayan people and the Tepehuán;[7] he also took charge of the Comicaris, and, at the cost of much labour, won over the Basiroas, whom he joined to Christian tribes.
[8] In his commentary on Wadding's writings, the Jesuit theologian Manuel La Reguera also ascribes to him a Life of Sister María de Jesús.
Wadding's major work, Practica de la teología mistica, the fruit of long personal experience rather than of study, was published nearly 40 years after his death (1681), and went through 10 editions.