St. Vincent de Paul Prayer Card (PC-46)
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PC-46 — St. Vincent de Paul Prayer Card
The Apostle of Charity — who turned compassion into a movement that feeds the world
Born in 1581 to a poor peasant family in southern France, Vincent de Paul began his priesthood with thoroughly earthly ambitions — seeking security, comfort, and clerical advancement. Then, somewhere between a deathbed confession that revealed to him the spiritual starvation of the French peasantry, a period of slavery in North Africa after being captured by Barbary pirates, and the quiet influence of a holy spiritual director, everything changed. The man who had pursued benefices began pursuing the poor — and never stopped.
What Vincent built in the decades that followed is almost impossible to catalogue. He organized the Ladies of Charity — noblewomen who fed and nursed the sick poor of Paris. He founded the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentians or Lazarists, in 1625, sending priests to evangelize the rural poor and reform the clergy at a time when French priests were poorly trained and spiritually adrift. He co-founded the Daughters of Charity with St. Louise de Marillac in 1633 — the first non-cloistered religious institute of women in the history of the Church, putting sisters directly into homes, hospitals, and streets rather than behind convent walls. He ransomed over a thousand galley slaves from North Africa. He established seminaries. He organized famine relief. He fed sixteen thousand people a day at the height of his charity work. His heart is still incorrupt today, enshrined in Paris.
He died on September 27, 1660, at the age of seventy-nine, and was canonized in 1737. He is the universal patron of all charitable works and societies. His name is carried on today by over eight hundred thousand members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, serving the poor in countries around the world. His feast day is September 27th.
Perfect for: St. Vincent de Paul Society members, volunteers, social workers, hospital workers, those in charitable ministry, September 27th feast day, and anyone who serves the poor in the spirit of the Gospel.