Saint Vincent de Paul
Priest
- Feast Day
- September 27
- Life
- 1581–1660
- Canonized
- 1737
- Order
- Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians, Lazarists)
- Born
- Pouy (now Saint-Vincent-de-Paul), Landes, France
Vincent de Paul was born to a peasant family in Gascony in 1581, ordained priest in 1600, and according to a tradition he himself fostered, briefly enslaved by Barbary corsairs at Tunis from 1605 to 1607. After spiritual formation under the future Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle in Paris, he served as tutor in the noble family of Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi, general of the galleys.
From this providential position he discovered both the spiritual destitution of rural peasants and the hellish conditions of those condemned to the royal galleys. In 1617 his sermon at Folleville and the Confraternity of Charity he founded at Châtillon-les-Dombes set the pattern of his life. In 1625 he founded the Congregation of the Mission, popularly called the Vincentians or Lazarists, dedicated to preaching missions to the rural poor and to forming priests in seminaries. With Saint Louise de Marillac he founded in 1633 the Daughters of Charity, the first non-cloistered congregation of women dedicated to the service of the sick and poor in their own homes. Their constitutions, that the cloister of a Daughter of Charity is the streets of the city, broke decisively with the medieval pattern of female religious life.
He served as confessor to King Louis XIII, sat on the Council of Conscience under the regency of Anne of Austria, organized relief for the war-ravaged provinces of Lorraine, Picardy and Champagne, and founded foundling hospitals at Paris. He died on 27 September 1660. Pope Benedict XIII beatified him in 1729; Pope Clement XII canonized him on 16 June 1737. Pope Leo XIII in 1885 declared him patron of all charitable societies.
Vincent de Paul stands at the head of the modern Catholic tradition of organized charity. His insight, that the poor are our masters and we their servants, has shaped Catholic social action from the seventeenth-century French missions to the lay Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, founded by Frédéric Ozanam in 1833 and now active in some 150 countries.
Patronages
charitable societies · hospitals · prisoners · the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul
Catholic Churches Named After Saint Vincent de Paul
20 parishes on Catholic Church Times share Saint Vincent de Paul's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
- St Vincent de Paul — Eoligarry, SCOTLAND
- St Vincent de Paul's Catholic Church — East Kilbride, SCT
- St. Vincent de Paul — Weyburn, SK
- St. Vincent de Paul Parish — Olongapo City, ZAMBALES
- Saint-Vincent de Paul — Paris
- Chapelle Saint-Vincent de Paul — Paris
- St. Vincent de Paul — Bedford, IN
- St. Vincent de Paul (Thornliebank) — Glasgow, SCT
- St. Vincent de Paul — Lozano, TX
- St. Vincent de Paul Church (St. John Paul II Parish) — Oromocto, NB
- St Vincent de Paul — Southmead, ENG
- St Vincent de Paul, Port Wakefield — Port Wakefield, SA
- St. Vincent de Paul Parish — Queensport, NS
- St Vincent de Paul — Becontree, Dagenham, LONDON
- St. Vincent de Paul Parish (Mission of Stanleyville) — Bathurst (Dewitt's Corners), ON
- St. Vincent de Paul — Connell, WA
- St. Vincent de Paul Parish — Hamilton, NJ
- St. Vincent de Paul — Leeds, ND
- Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic Church — Salem, OR
- St. Vincent de Paul — Coweta, OK
Sources