St. Vincent de Paul

Who they were

Vincent was a Gascon peasant's son who became a priest, frankly, to escape poverty, and spent a conversion's worth of years discovering that the poor were the point. As chaplain to the galleys he went down among the rowing benches. As a country pastor he watched a whole parish mobilise for one sick family and realised the problem was not compassion but organisation. So he organised: the Confraternities of Charity in every parish, the Congregation of the Mission for preaching in the countryside, and, with Louise de Marillac, the Daughters of Charity, sisters whose cloister, he said, would be the streets, and the first such community in the Church's history. He fed provinces during the wars of the Fronde, ransomed captives, and built the machinery of systematic charity that every parish pantry and the Society bearing his name still run on. He died in 1660, and France buried him as its conscience.

Why people turn to St. Vincent de Paul

Everyone who runs, staffs or funds the works of mercy, and everyone deciding whether to start. He is the patron of turning someone should into a roster and a schedule.

How to ask their intercession

Ask his prayers before the volunteer shift, and for the specific poor of your specific parish. His method was never the poor in general, always these ones, by name, this week.