St. Vincent de Paul

St. Vincent de Paul (born April 24, 1581, Pouy, now Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, France—died September 27, 1660, Paris; canonized 1737; feast day September 27) was a French saint who founded the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists, or Vincentians) for preaching missions and for educating and training a pastoral clergy. The patron saint of charitable societies, St. Vincent de Paul is primarily recognized for his charity and compassion for the poor, though he is also known for his reform of the clergy and for his early role in opposing Jansenism.

Educated by the Franciscans at Dax, France, he was ordained a priest in 1600 and graduated from the University of Toulouse in 1604. He was allegedly captured at sea by Barbary pirates and sold as an enslaved person but eventually escaped. He spent a year in Rome to continue his studies and then went to Paris, where he remained permanently. He placed himself under the spiritual guidance of the celebrated cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, who entrusted him with the parish of Clichy.

After founding the Congregation of the Mission in 1625, Vincent de Paul established in and around Paris the Confraternities of Charity—associations of laywomen who visited, fed, and nursed the sick and the poor. The wealth of these women, many of them from noble families, aided him in establishing the foundling hospital and other hospitals. With St. Louise de Marillac he cofounded the Daughters of Charity (Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul) in 1633. The association was patterned after the Confraternities of Charity and was the first noncloistered religious institute of women devoted to active charitable works.

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The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic charitable organization dedicated to the service of the poor, was founded by Antoine Frédéric Ozanam in 1833.