Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

Vincent de Paul was born in 1581 at Pouy in Gascony into a peasant family and was ordained in 1600. In letters he told of being captured by pirates and sold as a slave in Tunis; many historians doubt the story. As chaplain and tutor in the household of the Gondi family he saw the poverty of the peasants on their estates, and in 1625 he founded the Congregation of the Mission, priests who preached in the countryside and trained clergy. He organized wealthy women into Confraternities of Charity and in 1633, with Louise de Marillac, founded the Daughters of Charity, sisters who worked among the poor in the streets rather than in a cloister. He cared for abandoned infants, galley convicts and war refugees. He died in Paris on 27 September 1660 and was canonized in 1737.