CNA Staff, 27 September, 2025 / 1:00 pm (ACI Africa).
On Sept. 27 the Catholic Church remembers St. Vincent de Paul, the 17th-century French priest known as the patron of Catholic charities for his apostolic work among the poor and marginalized.
During a September 2010 Angelus address, Pope Benedict XVI noted that St. Vincent “keenly perceived the strong contrast between the richest and the poorest of people” and was “encouraged by the love of Christ” to “organize permanent forms of service” to provide for those in need.
The exact year of Vincent’s birth is not definitively known, but it has been placed between 1576 and 1581. Born to a poor family in the southwest of France, he showed his intellectual gifts from a young age, studying theology from around age 15. He received ordination as a priest in the year 1600 and worked as a tutor to students in Toulouse.
During a sea voyage in 1605, Vincent was seized by Turkish pirates and sold into slavery. His ordeal of captivity lasted until 1607, during which time the priest converted his owner to the Christian faith and escaped with him from Tunisia. Afterward, he spent time studying in Rome, and — in a striking reversal of fortune — served as an educator and spiritual guide to members of an upper-class French family.
Although Vincent had initially begun his priesthood with the intention of securing a life of leisure for himself, he underwent a change of heart after hearing the confession of a dying peasant. Moved with compassion for the poor, he began undertaking missions and founding institutions to help them both materially and spiritually. The onetime slave also ministered to convicts forced to serve in squalid conditions as rowers aboard galley ships.
