Meet Vincent de Paul

Saint Vincent de Paul (1581 – 1660) was a French Catholic priest dedicated to serving the poor. He was born into a peasant family in Pouy in south-western France. He began his studies theology at University of Toulouse to escape poverty and provide for his family. He was ordained priest at 19, and continued his studies in Law for about 4 years. He moved to Paris in 1609 were, under the spiritual guidance of Cardinal Pierre de Berulle, founder of the Oratory, decided to enter at the service of the family of Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi, a general of the French galleys. In 1617, at the request of Madame de Gondi, Vincent preached his first sermon of the mission to the poor in the church of Folleville. In the same year Vincent left the Gondi estates and traveled to Châtillon-les Dombes (eastern France), where he established the Confraternities of Charity, a group of lay women to provide organized material service to the poor. At the insistence of Madame de Gondi and with the Berulle’s influence, Vincent returned at the service of the Gondi and a couple of years later he became Chaplain-General of the Galleys in Paris. In that leadership role, Vincent was able to stop many abuses to the galley slaves. In 1625, at the age of 44, Vincent founded the Congregation of the Mission for the evangelization of the rural poor but with their motherhouse in Saint-Lazare, a large estate in Paris. In 1633, in collaboration with Louise de Marillac, Vincent co-founded the Daughters of Charity. This was the first religious group of women dedicated entirely to works of charity outside the cloister. Their mission was to accompany the Ladies of Paris in their most challenging services to the sick and the marginalized poor of Paris.

Vincent was a founder and a champion in organized charity for delivering quality and sustainable services to the poor and marginalized people of in the urban landscapes of Paris. Although his attention and leadership extended to the rural poor and the missions of other countries, his most influential response was given to the needs of extreme urban poverty in Paris. His genius in providing effective organizational model for serving the poor, along with his ability to provide the necessary resources to maintain those large infrastructures, were accompanied by his patience leadership to communicate with his followers and collaborators and superiors. He probably wrote more than 30,000 letters, managed a fairly large capital along with the estate of Saint Lazare, one of the largest land properties in Paris. He was a very innovative in sustaining the financial needs of his charity works by acquiring revenues from the transit taxes on his properties and a the incomes of a transportation company he owned. He was a very charismatic, collaborative and pragmatic leadership was driven by a clear vision and mission to serve the material and spiritual needs of the urban poor. His faith and spiritual worldview guided him to recognize the poorest of the poor with the same human and divine dignity of the wealthy French nobility.

Read more at Vincent on Leadership: The Hay Project, The Vincentian Center for Church and Society at St. John's University and The Vincentian Studies Institute at DePaul University