… Jerusalem is not simply the center or terminus of a pilgrimage but the place where Christ summons his followers, where he enlists them in his great enterprise, and from whence he dispatches them throughout the world. Ignatius’ sense of mission or apostolate thus became closely bound up with his journey to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself became the logical place to go to join Christ and enter his service. The pilgrim journey now led to a new commitment and a new life of activity and apostolic service. Ignatius subsequently communicated this larger concept of pilgrimage to his friends in Paris, and it explains their vows on Montmartre and their desire to go to the East.

…To Ignatius prayer is a type of pilgrimage. The Spiritual Exercises consists in large part of meditations on the life of Christ in which the exercitant is instructed always to envision the place mentally and to apply the senses to the scene: these are prayers based on a mental journey to the Holy Land. The exercitant visualizes the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem, observes the cave where Christ was born, sees the room of the Last Supper, pictures the great plain about Jerusalem where Christ is summoning his friends. The sacred scenes come alive in the imagination, and one is “as though present” in the holy places. This down-to-earth realism in prayer, this emphasis on sense perception and experience is one of the most characteristic and powerful aspects of Ignatian spirituality and reflects Ignatius’ awareness of God’s immanence in creation and of the human context and historical reality of the Christian mysteries. So also does his idea of pilgrimage to the East. Whether actually in the flesh or imaginatively in prayer he sought to know Christ in his human surroundings.

…Why did Ignatius and his friends finally abandon their Jerusalem project and go to Rome? Unquestionably, the Turks blocked the way. In case of such an eventuality they had agreed to go to Rome and offer their services to the pope. What was the logic or justification of this alternate proposal? They saw the pope as “the vicar of Christ” and his direction as comparable to service under the Standard of Christ. One of Ignatius’ companions, Peter Faber, in a letter written from Rome in November 1538, explained their decision by saying that the pope was “the lord of the entire harvest of Christ” and that he had “a greater knowledge of what is advantageous to the whole of Christendom.” They had preferred Jerusalem and an apostolate there, but Rome could be a second Jerusalem and from that center they could also go forth to spread Christ’s doctrine throughout the world.

(Olin, John C. “The Idea of Pilgrimage in the Experience of Ignatius Loyola John,” Church History, Vol. 48, No. 4, (Dec., 1979), pp. 387-397 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History.)