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 Vincent de Paul was born in Gascony in about 1580, of peasant stock. He was
an intelligent lad, and his father sent him off to be educated. He was
ordained at twenty, and at first was interested chiefly in a successful
career. But when he was thirty, he accepted a post as chaplain and tutor in
the household of Philip de Gondi, Count of Joigny. This brought him into
contact with the peasants on the Gondi estate, and he became concerned for
their needs, physical and spiritual. A peasant who believed himself to be
dying confessed to him that his previous confessions for many years had been
dishonest. Vincent began to preach in the local church on confession,
repentance, forgiveness, and the love of God. His sermons drew such crowds
of penitents that he had to call in a group of other priests to assist him.
He took on the pastorship of a neighboring church attended by a more
fashionable and aristocratic crowd, and there he likewise drew many of his
listeners to repentance and amendment of life. Returning to Paris, he worked
among the prisoners destined for the galleys who were being held at the
Conciergerie.
In 1625 he established the Congregation of the Mission (now known as the
Vincentians, or the Lazarists), a community of priests who undertook to
renounce all ecclesiastical advancement and devote themselves to work in the
small towns and villages of France. In an age not noted for
"interdenominational courtesy," he instructed his missioners that
Protestants were to be treated as brothers, with respect and love, without
patronage or condescension or contentiousness. Wealthy men and women came to
him, expressing a wish to amend their lives, and he organized them into a
Confraternity of Charity, and set them to work caring for the poor and sick
in hospitals and in home visits. In 1633 the Archbishop or Paris gave him
the Priory of St Lazare as a headquarters. There he offered retreats six
times a year for those who were preparing for the ministry. These lasted two
weeks each, and each involved about eighty students. He then began to offer
similar retreats for laypersons of all classes and widely varying
backgrounds. He said (identifying Lazarus of the Parable with Lazarus of
Bethany):
This house was formerly used as a retreat for lepers, and not One of them
was cured. Now it is used to receive sinners, who are sick men coveed with
spiritual leprosy, but are cured by the grace of God. Nay, rather, they are
dead men brought back to life. What a joy it is to think that the house of
St Lazare is a house of resurrection! Lazarus, after he had been four days
in the tomb, came out alive, and our Lord who raised him up still gives the
same grace to many who, after staying here some days as in the grave of
Lazarus, come out with a new life.
Out of his Confraternity of Charity there arose an order of nuns called the
Daughters (or Sisters) of Charity, devoted to nursing those who were sick
and poor. He said of them, "Their convent is the sick-room, their chapel the
parish church, their cloister the streets of the city." Many babies were
abandoned in Paris every year, and when Vincent saw some of them, he
established an orphanage for them, and thereafter often wandered through the
slums, looking in corners for abandoned babies, which he carried back to the
orphanage.
He complained to the King that ecclesiastical posts were distributed simply
as political favors, and that the spiritual qualifications of the appointees
were simply ignored. The King responded by creating a Council of Conscience
to remedy the matter, with Vincent at the head. On one occasion, a
noblewoman of the court, furious with Vincent because he refused to nominate
her son for a position as bishop, threw a stool at him. He left the room
with a stream of blood pouring from his forehead, and said to a companion
who was waiting for him, "Is it not wonderful how strong a mother's love for
her son can be?" He died 27 September 1660.
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