Saint Vincent de Paul: Apostle of Charity

Saint Vincent de Paul is the principal modern Catholic saint of organized charity, the seventeenth-century French priest who founded the Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentians) and the Daughters of Charity, and whose name was later given to the worldwide lay Catholic charitable association the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. Together with his collaborators Saint Louise de Marillac and Saint Francis de Sales, he gave the modern Catholic Church the institutional form of its service to the poor.

Early life and unwilling priesthood

Vincent was born on April 24, 1581, at the small Gascon village of Pouy (now called Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in his honor), in southwestern France, the third of six children of a poor peasant family. His parents recognized his intelligence and saved to send him to school; he was tonsured at fifteen and ordained priest at nineteen (in 1600), at an age below the canonical minimum (he was the recipient of an episcopal dispensation, a not-uncommon irregularity in the period).

His early priesthood was conventional and ambitious. He sought a comfortable benefice, hoped to retire wealthy, and was for the first several years a worldly cleric of average piety. Tradition (with some historical uncertainty) records that he was captured by Barbary pirates in 1605 while sailing from Marseille to Narbonne and held in slavery in Tunis for two years before escaping with his master, whom he converted to Catholicism. The episode, whether wholly historical or partly legendary, marks the beginning of his interior conversion.

Conversion to the apostolate of the poor

Back in France, Vincent served as tutor to the noble Gondi family. In 1617, while ministering to a dying peasant on the Gondi estates, he heard a confession that revealed the spiritual destitution of rural France: peasants who had received the sacraments their entire lives had never made a proper confession, never understood the faith, never been catechized. The experience shocked him.

In the same year, Vincent organized the first "Confraternity of Charity" at Châtillon-les-Dombes, a local society of laywomen who would visit the sick poor, prepare meals, and supply medicines. The model spread; within years, there were Confraternities of Charity in dozens of French parishes.

Vincent then turned to the systematic preaching of parish missions. In 1625, with the patronage of Madame de Gondi, he founded the Congregation of the Mission (called the "Vincentians" or "Lazarists" after the priory of Saint-Lazare that became their motherhouse). The Vincentian charism is double: parish missions (intensive multi-week parish renewals) and the formation of clergy (Vincent's Tuesday Conferences at Saint-Lazare became the seedbed of much of the seventeenth-century French clergy reform).¹

Foundation of the Daughters of Charity

In 1633, together with Saint Louise de Marillac (a widow of remarkable practical ability), Vincent founded the Daughters of Charity. The community was a radical innovation in Catholic religious life: a community of consecrated women who would not be cloistered, would not wear a religious habit (their distinctive headdress, the cornette, was the ordinary peasant headdress of seventeenth-century French women), and would dedicate themselves to direct service of the poor.

Vincent famously instructed the Daughters: "Your convent will be the house of the sick; your cell, a hired room; your chapel, the parish church; your cloister, the streets of the city; your enclosure, obedience; your grille, the fear of God; your veil, holy modesty."

The Daughters of Charity grew rapidly across France, then across Europe, then around the world. They became one of the largest communities of women religious in Catholic history.

Ministry to the abandoned

The work of Vincent's communities expanded across the second half of his life:

Foundling children: in 1638 Vincent received the first abandoned infants for organized Catholic care. His sermon at the Confraternity meeting in 1647 (in which he famously held a found infant before the noblewomen and asked who would be its mother) shamed Parisian society into supporting the work.
Galley slaves: Vincent's first noble patron, Philippe Emmanuel de Gondi, was Royal Commissioner General of the Galleys. Vincent ministered to the galley slaves at Marseille and Bordeaux, securing improvements in their treatment.
Refugees from the Wars of Religion: Vincent organized assistance for tens of thousands of refugees from the wars in Lorraine and from Catholic communities devastated by Protestant raids.
Famine relief: during the 1640s-1650s famines that struck eastern France, Vincent organized large-scale food distribution funded by Parisian noble charity.

Death and the modern legacy

Vincent died at Saint-Lazare on September 27, 1660, at seventy-nine years of age. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIII in 1729 and canonized by Pope Clement XII on June 16, 1737. He was declared the patron of all Catholic charitable societies by Pope Leo XIII in 1885.

The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, the great lay Catholic charitable association of the modern era, was founded in 1833 in Paris by Frédéric Ozanam (now Blessed Frédéric Ozanam), Vincent's spiritual descendant. The Society today operates in approximately 150 countries with millions of members, the principal vehicle of parish-level lay Catholic charitable work.

Patronage and devotion

Saint Vincent de Paul is patron of all Catholic charitable societies, of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, of hospitals, of lepers (from a particular ministry in his own life), of prisoners, and of volunteers. His feast on September 27 is celebrated as a Memorial in the universal Catholic Church.

The Vincentian charism is summarized in a phrase often attributed to him: "The poor are our masters; we serve Jesus Christ in their persons." For the broader Catholic teaching on works of mercy and on the Catholic theology of charity, see What is the Communion of Saints?. For the foundational Catholic prayer practices of the Vincentian formation, see the Holy Rosary (a Vincentian daily devotion) and the Anima Christi.

Sources

For the principal modern critical biography, see Pierre Coste, The Life and Works of Saint Vincent de Paul, 3 vols. (Newman Press, 1952). His correspondence, conferences, and documents are collected in the fourteen-volume Saint Vincent de Paul: Correspondence, Conferences, Documents (New City Press, 1985-2014). ↩