St. Vincent de Paul by Gianna

Hi, today I am going to talk to you about a great saint, who lived in the year 1581. This saint is Saint Vincent de Paul or Monsieur Vincent. He lived in France, and while he was still a young priest, he was captured by pirates, I think it's kind of cool that a normal priest was captured by pirates, sold into slavery, and went through many different masters in the two years he was in slavery, converted his last master, and was set free. You may think, what? So as not to get you confused, I will tell you about each of these things, one at a time.

First of all, I’m not exactly sure how he was captured, but then he was sold at a slave market, went through many masters, the wife of his last master heard about Vincent’s faith, visited him in the fields sometimes, and told her husband about it, who converted from his other religion to Christianity.

So now that you know a little more about his life, I am going to talk about how his life relates to me, and my family’s life. Well, I don’t really know how to say this, but we weren’t free either. My mom and my dad are divorced, and we always had to ask my dad if we could go out of the state to a different state or to a country. We actually were going to go to Ecuador for a mission trip but he said "No." That was one of the trips I was most looking forward to. I don’t really understand why we always had to do that. I think it was for custody, or something. But maybe you can see how we weren’t that free either. At least we weren’t slaves though. But we weren’t able to go out to the world and minister to those who are in need, like Saint Vincent who wasn’t either.

 

Saint Vincent did end up serving the poor in France, he organized groups to look after the needy, some women nursed the sick, while others cooked. Also, he had a holy rich lady who helped him and gave him money, you may be surprised that she is a saint, Saint Louisa, I think. I don’t know much about her though. We usually watch his movie, "Monsieur Vincent" on his feast day, September 27. It is great and I hope you watch it! 

 

Saint Vincent built homes for poor people and orphans. He was almost eighty years old when he died in 1660. Many years later, Blessed Fredrick Ozanam, continued Saint Vincent’s good deeds, plus, founded the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.

 

Thank you for reading this post, and I hope you learned a little more about Saint Vincent de Paul.

God bless,

Gianna