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Kids edition 3 min read
Who decided · ROME, September 22, 1655 AD

How a runaway cardinal helped his old teacher

Saint Vincent de Paul's priests can now promise their whole lives to poor country people, after more than twenty years of waiting.

Edition of · 3 min read

Saint Vincent de Paul
An old priest in a black soutane, white collar and black skullcap sits at a plain wooden table in a bare grey room and looks down at a sheet of handwritten parchment with a red wax seal; an inkstand and a quill lie to one side.
St. Vincent de Paul at Saint-Lazare, in Paris, with Pope Alexander VII's brief of September 22, 1655 AD. The brief approved the vows of the Congregation of the Mission.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of seventeenth-century French oil portraiture, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait de saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) (anonymous, after a model by Simon François de Tours, circa 1660, Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris) View source artwork.

ROME, September 22, 1655 AD — For more than twenty years, Saint Vincent de Paul waited for Rome to answer one question about his priests. He wanted to know if they could promise their whole lives to their work without becoming a religious order. On September 22, 1655 AD, Pope Alexander VII finally gave the answer St. Vincent wanted. By then St. Vincent was an old man in his seventies.

His priests belonged to the Congregation of the Mission. St. Vincent had started this group of priests to preach to the poor of the French countryside. He wanted them to stay in it for life, not join for a while and then leave.

St. Vincent used to say that people came and went from some groups around him like guests at an inn. So in the vow, each man would promise to give his whole life in the Congregation. He would give it to the salvation of the poor country people.

Solemn vows are the kind that make a man a member of a religious order. St. Vincent did not want his priests to become one. He wanted simple vows instead. Simple vows bind a man too, but they leave him a priest who belongs to no order. The theologians agreed that simple vows would not turn his priests into an order. But the older cardinals in Rome refused to approve the plan. To them, a group of priests like this was something new.

Twenty years of waiting

Pope Urban VIII set up the Congregation in January 1632 AD. But he left open what kind of group it would be. St. Vincent sent Father François du Coudray, one of his first companions, to Rome. Father du Coudray ran into resistance there. St. Vincent wrote back to him: “I am greatly astonished at what you tell me, but I fear only my own sins, for sooner or later our plan will succeed.”

Meanwhile St. Vincent called together the priests who had been with him longest, to choose their vows. At a meeting in 1642 AD, they agreed on a vow to stay in the Congregation for life. At a second meeting in 1651 AD, they added vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They still had no plan to start a religious order.

The cardinal who escaped

Then St. Vincent sent another priest, Father Jolly, to Rome. There Father Jolly found help from Cardinal de Retz. The cardinal had escaped from prison at Nantes in 1654 AD and fled to Rome. Many years before, when Cardinal de Retz was a boy, St. Vincent had been his teacher. The runaway cardinal had stayed devoted to his old teacher ever since.

Cardinal de Retz took up the case and put it to Pope Alexander VII. The Pope decided to judge it in his own court. First he had a group of cardinals study it closely.

Then Pope Alexander VII said yes, in a document called a brief. St. Vincent’s priests would take vows, but the Congregation was not to be counted among the religious orders. The brief said: sed sit de corpore cleri saecularis (but let it be of the body of the secular clergy). Each man would first spend two years trying out the life. Then he would vow poverty, chastity and obedience. The priests would wear the same cassock as any parish priest.

Three years later, on May 17, 1658 AD, St. Vincent handed his priests their rules. He did it at Saint-Lazare, his house in Paris. Speaking to them about their vows that year, he said: “Poverty is the bond of religious orders. We are not, it is true, religious; we are not worthy to be such, though we live in common.”

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

Junior Report. Written for readers ten to twelve, from the same sources and under the same rules as the rest of the paper. The words are shorter, hard terms are explained, and the question at the end is for the reader to think over.

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Image. AI-generated image, in the manner of seventeenth-century French oil portraiture, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait de saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) (anonymous, after a model by Simon François de Tours, circa 1660, Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris) — see the original.

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Sources for this story

Listed by paragraph.

  1. Paragraph 1
    • attested Catholic Encyclopedia, Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians) (Catholic Encyclopedia), ¶13
    • attested Henry Bedford, The Life of St. Vincent de Paul, CO ST. VINCENT DK PAUL., p. 58 ¶11
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, ECCLESIASTICAL SEMINARIES, p. 157 ¶34
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, p. 132
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, THE PRIESTS OF THE MISSION, p. 316 ¶101
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL GIVES RULES TO THE, p. 1658 ¶4
  2. Paragraph 2
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, THE PRIESTS OF THE MISSION, p. 316 ¶101
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL GIVES RULES TO THE, p. 1658 ¶4
    • attested Catholic Encyclopedia, Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians) (Catholic Encyclopedia)
  3. Paragraph 3
  4. Paragraph 4
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, p. 132
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, THE PRIESTS OF THE MISSION
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, approval of the Congregation, Rome
  5. Paragraph 5
  6. Paragraph 6
  7. Paragraph 7
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, approval of the Congregation, Rome
    • attested Abbé Michel Ulysse Maynard, trans. a Priest of the Congregation of the Mission, Virtues and Spiritual Doctrine of St. Vincent de Paul, I, p. 257 ¶9
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, IN THE FAMILY OF DE GONDI, p. 99 ¶23
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, p. 133
  8. Paragraph 8
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, approval of the Congregation, Rome
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, THE PRIESTS OF THE MISSION, p. 316 ¶101
  9. Paragraph 9
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, THE PRIESTS OF THE MISSION, p. 316 ¶101
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL GIVES RULES TO THE, p. 1658 ¶4
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 2, brief of 22 September 1655
    • attested Catholic Encyclopedia, Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians) (Catholic Encyclopedia), Constitution
    • attested Mgr Émile Bougaud, trans. Joseph Brady C.M., History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity, Volume 1, p. 333
  10. Paragraph 10

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