St. Vincent de Paul (Sept. 27th)

Of the various Saints and commemorations that are celebrated this week:

Sept 22 Dedication of the Basilica of Monte Senario (OSM)

Sept 23 Saint Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest 

Sept 26 Saints Cosmas and Damian, Martyrs

Sept 27 Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest 

Sept 28 Saint Wenceslaus, Martyr

Sept 28 Saint Lawrence Ruiz and companions, Martyrs


I’ve chosen to write about Saint Vincent de Paul.


The future St. Vincent de Paul was born in was born in 1581 in the village of Pouy, in the province of Guyenne and Gascony, Kingdom of France, nominally to a family of peasant farmers.  His father was named Jean de Paul, his mother Bertrande de Moras.  


To avoid being considered being of noble birth, the future St. Vincent de Paul, would write the “de Paul” part of his name as one word, though apparently no one else did.  


In any case, he did grow up in a family of some means because he did spend three years of study at the college at Dax, Aquitaine.  The Franciscans (friar minors) had a monastery that adjoined the campus, and in 1597 he joined them, studied for several more years at the University of Toulouse, and was ordained, at age 19 (quite young, certainly for our time) on Sept 23, 1600.  Indeed, when he was sent to his first assignment, in Tihl, Gascony of southern France, his assignment was appealed to Rome.  Rather than fight the case, it was decided to send the future saint back to school.   He received his Bachelor of Theology from the University of Toulouse in 1604. Later he received a Licentiate in Canon Law from the University of Paris.


So much for studies … 


The future saint’s life turn a significant turn when in 1605, “traveling by ship to Marsaille,” he was abducted by Barbary pirates, and spent two years in slavery, first in Tunis, later resurfacing in Istanbul.  It proved an odd but formative part of his life.  Making his way back to France, via Rome, he eventually to Paris, where he became a chaplain to a very wealthy family, the Gondy family.


However, the experience of having been enslaved never escaped him.  In 1622, he was appointed “Chaplain to the Galleys” in Paris, and more to the point to the people enslaved there.   He founded then the “Congregation of the Mission” (who became known as the Vincentians or Lazerites) devoted to working with not merely the people who were enslaved there but also to the poor peasants living in rural villages across France.  


His legacy of working with the poorest of the poor, survived the tumult of the 1789 French Revolution, and in 1833, the famed Society of St. Vincent de Paul, was founded by Catholic university students in Paris as an outreach organization to the poor people of Paris’ slums.  In the decades following, the SVdP spread across the Catholic world.  In the United States, today it has some 90,000 volunteers working through 4,400 parish based Conferences serving the nation’s poor.


 St. Vincent de Paul, pray for us! 

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