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 300th Anniversary of Deaths: Saint Vincent de Paul & Saint Louise de Marillac Scott 295-297 (1960) Saint Vincent de Paul was the founder of the Vincentian Congregation and the Sisters of Charity. His feast day is celebrated on September 27, the anniversary of this death in 1660. The three stamps above were issued to memorialize the 300th anniversary of his death and that of his collaborator, Saint Louise de Marillac, who also died in 1660 (her feast is celebrated on March 9, the date of her canonization). Below is the painting by Simon François de Tours that inspired the stamp depicting Saint Vincent de Paul:  "Vincent de Paul", by Simon François de Tours From Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain Saint Vincent was born in 1581 into a peasant family in Gascony in southwestern France, and was educated by Franciscans and then at the University of Toulouse. He was ordained a priest at age 19. David Farmer states that: "throughout his life he combined his apostolate among the rich and fashionable with utter devotion to the poor and oppressed."  St. Francis de Sales: 450th Anniversay of Birth Scott 1669 (2017) He met and was significantly influenced by Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622). In 1625 he founded a congregation of priests (Congregation of the Mission), with vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability. They would devote themselves to smaller towns in France by following a simple apostolic life of preaching and service. In 1633 they were given a priory in Paris (Church of Saint-Lazare). Vincent also founded the Sisters of Charity in 1633, a congregation of unenclosed women to serve the sick and poor. Its first superior was Saint Louise de Marillac. Historian Donald Attwater describes Saint Vincent de Paul as follows: "[T]here was no human suffering that he did to seek to relieve, and for the help of the religiously impoverished he used the same bold and wise methods as for the material wants of galley-slaves, decayed gentry or abandoned children. He approached each undertaking with the same humbleness and simple trust in Providence and his single-minded goodness and generosity stirred up a like generosity in others."Vincent de Paul was beatified in 1729 by Pope Benedict XIII and canonized in 1737 by Pope Clement XII. His relics are enshrined in the St. Vincent de Paul Chapel in Paris. The life story of Saint Vincent de Paul was told in the 1948 French film Monsieur Vincent, which starred Pierre Fresnay as Saint Vincent de Paul. REFERENCES: |
