27 September - Vincent de Paul was born on April 24, 1581, on the Ranquines farm near the village of Le Pouy, near the town of Dax in the Landes department. Vincent was brought to help his parents at a very early age. So he spends his first years as a shepherd tending sheep, cows and pigs.

However, he had to leave his family home for Dax, where his father enrolled him in the Franciscan-run Cordeliers College. Vincent stayed there for three years, during which he successfully took grammar classes and learned Latin. He is an example of hard work for his classmates. At the age of fifteen, on December 20, 1596, he received the tonsure and minor orders in the collegiate church of Bidache from the hands of the bishop of Tarbes Salvat d'Iharse.

In 1597, he joined the University of Toulouse where he studied theology for seven years, obtaining the bachelor's degree in theology on October 12, 1604. On September 23, 1600, he was ordained priest at Château-l'Évêque (Dordogne) by the Bishop of Périgueux François de Bourdeilles in the chapel of the Episcopal castle. Teaching at the University of Toulouse in preparation for a doctorate, he was captured in 1605 off the coast of Aigues Mortes by Barbaresques on their way back from a voyage to Marseille. After two years of slavery in North Africa, he is said to have escaped from Tunis, taking him to Rome.

Thanks to the recommendations of the Holy See, in 1610 he became chaplain to Queen Marguerite of France, who then devoted a third of his income to charity. In 1612, he replaced the parish priest François Bourgoing in Clichy. At the age of 31, he became the parish priest of Saint-Sauveur-Saint-Médard in Clichy, where he began his parish ministry. The future Cardinal de Bérulle, who had been Vincent's spiritual director since 1609, appointed him parish priest. He takes possession of the parish on May 2, 1612. Thanks to Bérulle, Vincent de Paul enters in 1613 as tutor in the house of Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi, general of the galleys of France. He becomes confessor to Madame de Gondi, who takes him to Picardy for his charitable works, where he discovers the misery of the peasants. In January 1617, he is called to an old man dying in the village of Gannes, who makes a public and general confession to him. The next day, January 25, at the request of Madame de Gondi, he made an appeal for confession during a memorable sermon in the church of Folleville. The overwhelming response of the villagers to this call suddenly made him aware of the importance of his mission. He was then assigned as a country parish priest in the parish of Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, near Mâcon, north of Lyon. Chaplain to the galley general Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi and regularly visiting the prisons holding criminals condemned to the galleys, he was appointed Chaplain General of the galleys by the Marquis de Belle-Île on February 8, 1619.

On December 12, 1617, together with the well-to-do ladies of the city, he founded the Ladies of Charity (Confrérie des Servantes et des Gardes des pauvres or Charité de Châtillon) to help the poor. In 1633, he created with Louise de Marillac and Marguerite Naseau the Company of the Daughters of Charity. They later took the name "Compagnie des Filles de la Charité de Saint-Vincent de Paul". Thanks to the financial support of Madame de Gondi, he founded the Congregation of the Mission in 1625. Dedicated to the evangelization of the poor in the countryside, the congregation took the name of Lazaristes (for living in the Saint-Lazare district of Paris, the Saint-Lazare enclosure). Vincent de Paul, who will train many priests, creates a seminary of the Mission. The first Lazarists were sent to Algiers in 1646, Madagascar in 1648 and Poland in 1651. In 1635, he sent relief to the populations of the Duchy of Lorraine and Bar ravaged by French and Swedish troops. In 1638, the work of the "Foundlings" began. In 1648, he called an assembly of charitable ladies and, when he spoke, he recalled that the work had already saved 600 children but that the resources were lacking to continue the work undertaken. In 1651, Vincent also organized collections in Paris to help the victims of the war in Picardy, Champagne and the Ile-de-France region. In 1653, he founded the Hospice du Saint-Nom-de-Jésus in Paris, east of the Enclos Saint-Lazare. Vincent de Paul also instituted spiritual retreats, during which people from all walks of life, the poor and the rich, the lackey and the lord, prayed together and took their meals in the same refectory.

Vincent de Paul knows how to mobilize the ladies of the French nobility and bourgeoisie in the service of the poor. Louis XIII wants to be assisted by him in his last moments to confess and die in his arms on May 14, 1643. He also founded a hospice for the elderly, which became the hospital of La Salpêtrière in 1657.

He died in the odor of sanctity on September 27, 1660 32. He is buried in the church of Saint-Lazare, which is part of the Saint-Lazare house in the faubourg Saint-Denis, on September 28, 1660, in a vault dug in the middle of the choir of the chapel. His body lies today in the Chapel of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, located at 95, rue de Sèvres in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. This is the present headquarters of the Lazarist priests of the Congregation of the Mission. They were relocated there in 1817, after the events of the Revolution. Vincent was beatified by Benedict XIII on August 13, 1729 and canonized by Clement XII on June 16, 1737. In 1885, Pope Leo XIII instituted him "patron of all charitable works".