Saint Vincent de Paul

Vincent was born in April 1581 at Pouy, near Dax in the Landes, a village that now bears his name, into a family of farmers. He was ordained a priest in 1600, at about nineteen, at Château-l’Évêque in the Périgord. By his own account he was captured at sea around 1605 and held as a slave in Barbary before escaping, and historians remain uncertain where he was in those years.

In 1612 he was named parish priest of Clichy, near Paris, and in 1613 he entered the household of the Gondi family as tutor to the children and spiritual director of Madame de Gondi. In January 1617, on the Gondi lands in Picardy, he heard the confession of a dying peasant, and on January 25 he preached at Folleville a sermon on general confession that is counted as the first of his missions. Later that year, as parish priest of Châtillon-les-Dombes, he founded the first Confraternity of Charity, the origin of today’s Ladies of Charity.

In 1619 he was named chaplain general of the galleys. With the support of the Gondis he founded the Congregation of the Mission on April 17, 1625, to preach to the country people, and in 1632 its priests settled at Saint-Lazare in Paris, from which they took the name of Lazarists. In 1633, with Saint Louise de Marillac, he founded the Daughters of Charity, and from 1638 the sisters took in abandoned children.

From 1639 he organized relief for Lorraine, ruined by war, and in 1651 for the battlefields of Picardy, Champagne and the Île-de-France. He died in Paris on September 27, 1660.

Further reading: Marian Apparitions of France: A Pilgrim’s Guide.

Pope Benedict XIII beatified Vincent in 1729, and Pope Clement XII canonized him in 1737. Pope Leo XIII named him patron of all charitable works. Saint-Lazare was sacked on July 13, 1789. On April 25, 1830, his body was carried in solemn procession from the chapel of the Daughters of Charity on the rue du Bac, by way of Notre-Dame, to the new chapel of the Lazarists at 95 rue de Sèvres, where it lies in a silver shrine above the high altar. His heart is kept in a reliquary above the right side altar in the chapel of the Daughters of Charity at 140 rue du Bac.

In 1833 Blessed Frédéric Ozanam and his companions founded in Paris the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, now present in parishes across North America. During the war of 1870 his body was hidden, and for a time it was protected by the embassy of the United States.

Vincent is usually shown as an elderly priest in a cassock, often with a foundling child in his arms. The shrine on the rue de Sèvres, designed by the goldsmith Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot in 1817 and made in solid silver by his son Charles-Nicolas, carries a silver statuette of the saint on its lid with angels for Religion, Faith, Hope and Charity; through its glass his remains can be seen, covered in wax and dressed in his own vestments. Above the sanctuary of the chapel, a grisaille by the Vincentian brother François Carbonnier, installed in 1855, shows him among the virtues of simplicity, charity and humility.

Patron of all charitable works, named by Pope Leo XIII.

• Paris, 95 rue de SèvresThe chapel of the Congregation of the Mission, where his body has rested above the high altar since April 25, 1830.
• Paris, 140 rue du BacThe chapel of the Daughters of Charity, known for the Miraculous Medal, which keeps his heart above a side altar.
• ClichyThe town where he was parish priest from 1612; the parish of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul is at 99 boulevard Jean-Jaurès, and the font of the old church bears the date 1612.
• FollevilleThe village in Picardy where he preached on January 25, 1617, the sermon counted as the first of his missions.
• Saint-Vincent-de-PaulThe village near Dax, formerly Pouy, where he was born in 1581.

• Via CaritatisThe Way of Charity, seven daysDay I, Paris
• Via SanctorumThe Way of the Saints, nine daysDay I, Paris