The exact year of the future Saint Vincent’s birth is not definitively known, but it has been placed between 1576 and 1581. Although he was quite devout as a child, he was ashamed of his poverty and longed to advance in society. He later shamefully admitted that he was even embarrassed by his father when he was young: “I was ashamed to walk with him and to acknowledge him as my father because he was badly dressed and a little lame.”
Vincent’s father, however, was not ashamed of his son and saw much promise in him. When Vincent was a young teenager, his father sold an ox so that he could send his son to be formally educated. He was ordained a priest in 1600. Yet, it was the deathbed confession of a dying servant that opened Vincent de Paul’s eyes to the crying spiritual needs of the peasantry of France. This seems to have been a crucial moment in the life of the man from that small farm in Gascony, who had first become a priest with little more ambition than to have a comfortable life.
The Countess de Gondi—whose servant he had helped—persuaded her husband to endow and support a group of able and zealous missionaries who would work among poor tenant farmers and country people in general. Then, in 1604, Father Vincent received an inheritance from a wealthy woman and traveled to Marseilles to sell the property. Marseilles was about 200 miles east of Toulouse by foot, but that port city could be reached much more quickly by boat. After selling the property, he was invited by a man to accompany him by boat to the port of Narbonne.
Traveling by boat was known to be dangerous since many North African Muslim pirates patrolled those waters, looking for men to enslave. Father Vincent decided to sail to Narbonne, anyway, because the wind was in their favor and the trip should be quick. However, pirates did intercept them, attacked the boat, killed some onboard, and injured everyone else. Father Vincent received an arrow in his shoulder. Once captured, they were taken to the North African port of Tunis, in modern-day Tunisia, where they were humiliated, treated like animals, and sold. Father Vincent reports that over the next two years he was bought and sold multiple times. Finally, he was sold to a master who was a former Franciscan priest who had become a Muslim, having renounced the Catholic faith to win his freedom. Father Vincent won the disgraced priest over, helped him to convert back to the faith, and together, they escaped.
Then, in 1625, in order to address the growing spiritual needs he observed, Father Vincent founded the Congregation of the Missions, later known as the Vincentians (or Lazarists). The congregation had begun the prior year when five other priests started assisting him with the missions he conducted on the Gondi property. The group aimed to minister to the rural poor who, due to poorly trained and neglectful clergy, were spiritually deprived and too many peasants lacked even a basic understanding of the Catholic faith. The new congregation embarked on a mission of catechesis, sacramental celebrations, and spiritual direction for these peasants. They also worked to meet the physical needs of the sick and poor.
Vincent was too humble to accept leadership of the group that had gathered around him, at first, but after working for some time in Paris among imprisoned galley slaves, he returned to be the congregational leader. These priests, with vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability, were to devote themselves entirely to the people in smaller towns and villages.
Later, Vincent established confraternities of charity for the spiritual and physical relief of the poor and sick of each parish. From these, with the help of Saint Louise de Marillac, came the Daughters of Charity, “whose convent is the sickroom, whose chapel is the parish church, whose cloister is the streets of the city.” He also organized the rich women of Paris to collect funds for his missionary projects, founded several hospitals, collected relief funds for the victims of war, and ransomed over 1,200 galley slaves from North Africa. He was zealous in conducting retreats for clergy at a time when there was great laxity, abuse, and ignorance among them. He was a pioneer in clerical training and was instrumental in establishing seminaries.
During a September 2010 Angelus address, the late Pope Benedict XVI noted that St. Vincent “keenly perceived the strong contrast between the richest and the poorest of people,” and was “encouraged by the love of Christ” to “organize permanent forms of service” to provide for those in need. A prolific writer, it has been reported that during his lifetime St. Vincent wrote more than 30,000 letters and that nearly 7,000 had been collected in the 18th century. Today, there are at least five collections of his letters in circulation. Saint Vincent – Ora pro nobis!
Nature and dignity 