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September 27 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

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event · PARIS, September 27, 1660 AD

St. Vincent de Paul dies at four, his hour of prayer

The founder of the Sisters of Charity had risen at that hour to pray for forty years; he died in his armchair, and his last clear word was 'I trust'.

A painting of an elderly priest in a white surplice and gold stole seated in an armchair, surrounded by priests holding candles, one kneeling at his side and another standing with the holy oils.
St. Vincent de Paul receives the last sacraments, seated in his chair among his priests, in a nineteenth-century painting at Folleville, Somme.

Saint Vincent de Paul died in his armchair at Saint-Lazare in Paris at about a quarter past four on Monday morning, while the priests of his house were saying matins. He founded a congregation of priests to teach the country poor, and with St. Louise de Marillac he founded the Sisters of Charity. His priests prayed beside him through the night, and when one of them reached the words of trust in the act of hope, St. Vincent murmured 'Confido' (*I trust*).

5 min read

A painting of a balding, grey-bearded priest in a black cassock standing in a bare whitewashed room, one hand resting on a sheet of parchment on a wooden table from which a round lead seal hangs on a cord, with a biretta, inkwell and quill beside it and a crucifix on the wall.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of mid-sixteenth-century Roman oil portraiture, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Ignatius of Loyola (Jacopino del Conte, 1556 AD, Curia Generalizia of the Society of Jesus, Rome) View source artwork.

event · ROME, Papal States, September 27, 1540 AD

Pope Paul III approves St. Ignatius's order, but caps it at sixty men

Pope Paul III has approved Saint Ignatius of Loyola and his nine companions as a religious order, the Society of Jesus. Cardinal Bartolomeo Guidiccioni, who opposed any new order, blocked their rule for a year before changing his mind and pleading for it with the Pope. His condition is written into the bull: the Society may take in no more than sixty men.

4 min read

More in this edition

A sepia engraving of a plain church interior with white box pews and tall clear windows, where a young widow in a black cape and white cap sits alone in a side pew with a book in her hands, her face in profile turned toward the window, while the rest of the congregation faces a distant table.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of early nineteenth-century American stipple and line engraving, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Elizabeth Ann Seton (Amabilia Filicchi, after the Ceroni engraving of c. 1868 after Saint-Memin's engraving of 1797; Daughters of Charity / National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Emmitsburg) View source artwork.

In a letter to her friend Amabilia Filicchi at Leghorn, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton described sitting in a side pew of her Episcopal church in New York, turned toward the Catholic church in the next street. In the same letter she answered her pastor's argument against the Catholic belief that God is present in the consecrated host. Her relatives' support depended on her staying an Episcopalian.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Saint Vincent de Paul, priest (Memorial)

  • Saint Vincent de Paul, priestMemorial

Saint of the day

Saint Vincent de Paul

A French priest born to a peasant family in Gascony, St. Vincent de Paul founded the Congregation of the Mission to preach to the country poor and, with St. Louise de Marillac, the Daughters of Charity. He died in Paris in 1660 AD.

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On this day in the Church

  • 591 Word reached Pope St. Gregory the Great in Rome that Ariulf, the Lombard duke of Spoleto, was believed to be marching on Ravenna or on Rome itself.Our reportSource
  • 1804 St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a widow in New York, sent her children out to play, knelt to pray over whether to become a Catholic, and wrote that afternoon to her friend Antonio Filicchi.Our reportSource
  • 2017 Pope Francis wrote to the Vincentian family on the feast of St. Vincent de Paul, marking four hundred years since the first Confraternity of Charity at Châtillon.Source

Quote of the day

“I must not judge poor people according to their exterior or according as they speak, for often they are far from what they seem. Let us judge them by the light of faith, and we shall see in them the Son of God, who wished to be poor, who in His Passion lost almost the appearance of a man, who appeared a fool to the Gentiles, a stumbling-block to the Jews.”
— St. Vincent de Paul, Émile Bougaud, History of St. Vincent de Paul, vol. 1, trans. Joseph Brady (1899)