Vincent de Paul

Vincent de Paul was born on 24 April 1581 in the village of Pouy, in the Landes of Gascony in the Kingdom of France, the third child of Jean de Paul and Bertrande de Moras, small farmers who owned a modest holding. As a boy he tended livestock. Recognizing his intelligence, his family supported studies with the Cordeliers (Franciscans) at Dax and then at the University of Toulouse, where he took a bachelor's degree in theology. He was ordained priest at Château-l'Évêque on 23 September 1600 by François de Bourdeilles, Bishop of Périgueux. The ordination at about nineteen years of age did not fully satisfy later Tridentine age requirements, a fact Vincent himself later treated with humility. In his early priesthood he sought benefices and spent time in Rome; like many clerics of rural origin, he hoped preferment would ease his family's poverty.

A traditional episode, based on letters Vincent wrote in 1607 and 1658, holds that in 1605 he was seized by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean and sold as a slave in Tunis, serving successive masters until he escaped to Aigues-Mortes around 1607. Because the story depends almost entirely on Vincent's own testimony and contains chronological difficulties, some historians have regarded it as embellished or even fictitious, while others accept a core of fact. After his return he was drawn into the reform movement associated with Pierre de Bérulle and the French school of spirituality. He became pastor of Clichy-la-Garenne near Paris and, more consequentially, entered the household of Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi, general of the galleys, as tutor to the Gondi children and chaplain. Two experiences in 1617 reoriented his life: at Folleville in Picardy, the confession of a dying peasant disclosed the ignorance and neglect of rural Catholics; at Châtillon-les-Dombes he mobilized women of the parish into a Confraternity of Charity to nurse and feed the sick poor. From these events dated his lifelong commitment to popular missions and organized charity.

On 17 April 1625 Vincent signed the foundation contract of the Congregation of the Mission, a company of priests who would live in common, preach parish missions in the countryside, and later staff seminaries for the reform of the clergy. The community was given the former priory of Saint-Lazare in Paris, whence its members were often called Lazarists. In 1633 he and Louise de Marillac began the Daughters of Charity, whose members took annual rather than perpetual vows and were free to work in hospitals, prisons, and slums rather than remaining behind a grille. Vincent also multiplied lay Confraternities of Charity, established the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés for abandoned infants, organized aid for galley slaves at Marseille and Paris, and directed massive relief for the devastated provinces of Lorraine and Champagne during the Thirty Years' War and the Fronde. From 1643 he served on the Conseil de Conscience, which recommended candidates for bishoprics under the regency of Anne of Austria, using the office to promote pastors of genuine pastoral zeal.

Vincent died at Saint-Lazare in Paris on 27 September 1660. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIII on 13 August 1729 and canonized by Pope Clement XII on 16 June 1737. The Roman calendar keeps his feast on 27 September. He is invoked as patron of charitable organizations, hospitals, prisoners, volunteers, Madagascar, and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, which Frédéric Ozanam and fellow students founded in Paris in 1833 under his patronage. His body is enshrined in the chapel of the Congregation of the Mission at 95 rue de Sèvres in Paris; his heart is reserved at the motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity. Through the Vincentian Family his institutions continue to shape Catholic social action.