July 19th - St. Vincent de Paul

“God admonishes all of us to use our earthly goods to make friends for ourselves among the poor. They, in turn, becoming the friends of their benefactors, will be the cause of their admission to heaven.” - St. Augustine

Vincent de Paul was born to peasant farmers in 1581, in a village in the Kingdom of France. He was the third of six children. Early on he showed talent for literacy and herding his family’s livestock.

At 15, his father paid to send him to the seminary by selling the family’s oxen.

He studied Theology at the University of Toulouse. The atmosphere at the university not conducive to a life of piety or spiritual contemplation, but Vincent managed to continue his studies despite the turbulent and quarrelsome atmosphere. He helped pay for his education by tutoring others.

In 1600, at the age of 19, he was ordained. At the time, there was a required minimum age of 24 for ordination (established by the Council of Trent), so when he was appointed to a parish, there was an appeal to Rome. Instead of fight the appeal which he would surely lose, he resigned from the position and continued his studies. In 1604, he received his Bachelor of Theology from the University of Toulouse, and later he received a Licentiate in Canon Law from the University of Paris.

Early biographies of Vincent describe a period of capture and enslavement during his two years away from France, but later biographers dispute this claim as myth. Legend goes that, in 1605, while on a ship traveling from Marseilles to Narbone, he was captured by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in Tunis. Two years later, he managed to escape and return to France.

Vincent continued his studies in Rome. He became a chaplain to the Count of Goigny. For a short time, he became pastor of a small parish in Clichy.

Eventually he devoted his life to preaching missions, providing relief to the poor, and establishing hospitals. This work became his passion. 

He organized a group of wealthy women in Paris to collect funds for missionary projects, founded hospitals, gather relief funds for the victims of war, and to ransom 1,200 galley slaves from North Africa. From participation in this work he would eventually establish the Daughters of Charity, an apostolic community within the church that is devoted to serving the poor. 

The newly formed Daughters of Charity set up soup kitchens, organized community hospitals, established schools and homes for orphaned children, offered job training, taught the young to read and write, and improved prison conditions. 

Vincent was appointed as the chaplain to the galleys and worked for some time in Paris among imprisoned galley slaves.

Vincent became the superior of a group of priests who take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability, devoting themselves entirely to the people in small towns and villages.

There was great laxity, abuse, and ignorance among the clergy in France during this time. Vincent helped reform the clergy, and reformed the manner in which they were instructed and prepared for the priesthood. He was a pioneer in clerical training and was instrumental in establishing seminaries. His retreats, open to priests and laymen, were very well well attended.

By the time of St. Vincent’s death in 1660, there were more than forty houses of the Daughters of Charity in France.