Saint Vincent de Paul

Vincent de Paul was born in Pouy, near Dax, on April 24, 1581, into a peasant family. As a boy he tended sheep. He became a priest at nineteen — too young, and he did it to escape poverty: he wrote so himself, many years later, without making excuses. His life changed when he was around forty, and it changed because of two episodes. The first: in a village, called to the bedside of a dying peasant, he realized that the man knew nothing about what he claimed to believe, and that no one had ever explained it to him. The second: in Châtillon, he found a whole family sick with no one to look after them; he said so from the pulpit, and that afternoon half the town went to bring them food — all at once, and the next day nobody at all. He understood that spontaneous charity isn’t enough: it has to be organized. Everything else comes from there. The Confraternities of Charity, the Ladies of Charity — noblewomen he sent into hospitals and prisons — and, with Louise de Marillac, the Daughters of Charity, who came instead from the countryside. And the Congregation of the Mission, the Lazarists, to preach to peasants and train the clergy. He took care of the convicts on the king’s galleys, the abandoned children of Paris, the ransoming of slaves in Barbary. He died in Paris on September 27, 1660. He is the patron of all Catholic charitable works. If your name is Vincent, today is your name day.