The Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola of Mexico City (1767): a school for women that fought sixteen years to stay out of the Church's hands

A Basque merchants' confraternity in Mexico City spent thirty-five years and its own money building a school for orphan girls and poor widows, and then spent sixteen of them in Madrid and Rome to obtain what it actually wanted: a constitution the clergy could not administer and that could never be turned into a convent. It opened on 9 September 1767 under a Rectora, a Vice-Rectora and a Secretaria elected by ballot. Its founding statute also barred married women and illegitimate daughters.