St Vincent de Paul
1580- 1660 ~ Vincent was born in a village near Pouy, France, son of peasant farmers, Jean de Paul and his wife, Bertrande de Moras. He had five brothers and sisters. Most of his childhood was spent tending his father’s sheep, which gave him plenty of time alone enabling him to pray and daydream. From an early age he said he wished to be a priest when he grew up so his father sent him to be educated by a community of Franciscan monks at Dax College not too far away from their home. He then undertook further study at Toulouse and was ordained priest at the young age nineteen. In the first few years as a priest he did mainly mundane pastoral work in a prosperous area of France and administered to the more affluent of parishioners.
When his parents died in 1605, Vincent endured a terrifying episode of his life. He travelled to Marseilles to claim his inheritance and on the way back, was captured by pirates and taken to Algeria to be sold as a slave. He experienced appalling conditions and severe poverty which he never knew existed. He met convicts, galley slaves, murderers, beggars and urchins and he was shocked by what he encountered. He was lucky though as he managed to escape and was able to get to Avignon and from there he made his way to Rome where he decided to do stay for a while and do some further study.
At this point in his life, he began to work out ways he could help the poorer people to have a more comfortable life. On his return to Paris he began organising groups of lay people to administer to the poor and the sick. This attracted interest from not only in France, but all over the world. Meanwhile, he took a job as a tutor in Count de Gondi’s household, the count was the general of the galley slaves and Vincent began to minister to them to improve living and working environments.
Around this time, Vincent established a mission devoted to the care of peasants which was run by lay-people. He called this society the “Congregation of the Mission” also known as the “Vincentians” or the “Lazarists”. He organised and set up a school where priests received special training to work with the poor and ill and he made it available to all people regardless of religion, race or circumstance and rapidly the society spread all over France. Vincent also founded an order of nuns he called the “Sisters of Charity” which were trained to run the hospitals and orphanages.
Throughout his life, Vincent was a friend to the poor and the rich alike, to royalty and to nobility, prisoners and the destitute and he committed his life to the relief of human suffering and misery. The last few years of his life were spent bed-ridden due to swollen legs and ulcers, but he still managed to supervise his organisation from his sick bed. He died in 1660 aged eighty and was deeply missed. In 1833 the Vincent de Paul society was founded by Frederick Ozanan who was a student at Sorbonne University in Paris. He realised more should be done for the poor and sick of Paris. He set up a society of volunteers dedicated to helping the less fortunate, open to all walks of life and he named the society after St Vincent de Paul. Today, the society or S.V.P as it is often referred to is still going strong and it is evident in every parish in the country. He is the patron saint of all charitable organisations.