Congregation of the Mission: 400 years of service

On January 25, 1617, in Folleville — a small rural village in France — the priest Vincent de Paul preached a sermon in front of poor peasants in the countryside who did not have access to the church since many of its priests were in the cities.

One biographer described the event: “the sermon was powerful and easily understood. He instructed them, he moved their hearts and encouraged them.” Many came to confess so much that they had to invite some Jesuits in Amiens, a nearby city, to help them. Later in his life, Vincent would call the event “the first sermon of the mission”.

Pierre Coste, the foremost biographer of Vincent de Paul described the event’s significance in the saint's life direction: “The mission at Folleville clearly revealed to Vincent de Paul what God expected from him. When so many souls in these country villages were endangering their eternal salvation, was it fitting that he should spend the greater part of his time within the narrow circle of a single family, giving lessons to two or three children? After a long and terrible struggle, God had set him free from temptations against the faith after he had made a resolution to devote the rest of his days to the service of the poor.”

Four years later (1625), the Congregation of the Mission was formally organized — a group of diocesan priests who dedicated their lives to preaching the mission in the countrysides of France where priests did not want to go. People who saw them called them “the priests of the mission”.

In his letter to the Vincentians celebrating their 400th anniversary today (2025), Pope Francis wrote: "It is my hope that the centenary celebrations will highlight the importance of Saint Vincent’s vision of service to Christ in the poor for the renewal of the Church of our time in missionary discipleship and outreach to the needy and the abandoned in the many peripheries of our world and the fringes of a shallow, throwaway culture."

GO, REBUILD MY HOUSE

In response, I earlier reflected on the significance of the Vincentian charism in the church of our time, in the time of Pope Francis. I wrote an article entitled: “Go, Rebuild my House”: Empowering the Church of the Poor through the Eyes of Saint Vincent de Paul.” (free download here https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi...

The call to incarnate the “Church of the Poor” is a constant rallying vision of any movement for church reform—from the words of early Church fathers to Saint Francis of Assisi and the mendicants, from the Reformation to the Pact of the Catacombs and liberation theologies.

Vincent de Paul was confronted with the same challenge by a Huguenot in Montmirail: “The pastors are ignorant and vicious, and the faithful are left without instruction … the poor country folks are lost. Don’t tell me that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit. I do not believe you.”

The life and mission of Vincent de Paul can be read as a reply to this objection. This paper is a theological reflection on some hermeneutical keys in Pope Francis’s program of church reform, as it also attempts to search for possible inspirations from the ministry and legacy of Vincent de Paul.

I did this in three parts. First, we start with stories of the suffering peoples as the ground of our theologizing. Second, we identify three main hermeneutical keys in Pope Francis’s theology to understand the directions in which he wants to lead the Church of our times. We juxtapose these papal reflections with the spirit of Vincent de Paul’s reading of the gospels, his teachings and ministry. We hope that this re-reading of the charism leads to the Vincentian Family’s contribution to the Church reform Pope Francis envisions as response to our suffering world. Third, we conclude with a reflection on empowering the Church of the poor—an ecclesiological vision common to Saint Vincent and Pope Francis.

FROM FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Saint Bonaventure told a story about Francis of Assisi. One day, Saint Francis was walking by the country church of San Damiano and went inside to pray. “Kneeling before an image of the Crucified,” Bonaventure writes, “Francis heard with his bodily ears a voice coming from the cross, telling him three times: ‘Francis, go and repair my house which as you see, is falling into ruin’. Saint Francis rose up, made the sign of the cross, and sold everything (his clothes and the horse which carried him) in order to raise funds to repair the church. At first, he took the message literally.

But the Church the Lord was talking about was not the building but the “body of Christ”—the lepers, the sick, the vulnerable— the Church of the Poor.

In the vision of Saint Francis, however, the Church of the poor also included animals and flowers, the sun and moon, the rest of creation. Our “common home” is being destroyed and is falling apart, as Laudato si’ rightly tells us. And as we hear the “cry of the earth,” we also hear the “cry of the poor” who are the first victims of our neglect and aggression.

TO VINCENT DE PAUL

Four hundred years after St. Francis, Vincent de Paul heard the same call to rebuild God’s house. In Saint Vincent, the voice calling for reform did not come directly from heaven or from the crucifix, as it did in Saint Francis.

In an incident I mentioned at the start of this article, the challenge came from a Huguenot during the height of Vincent’s missionary activities around 1620. The Huguenot cast some doubts on the authenticity of the Church as one guided by the Spirit. While some pastors were wallowing in luxury and ignorance, the poor were left to themselves without pastoral care. This does not look like a Spirit-filled situation.

We have seen how the life and mission of Vincent de Paul was a decisive reply to this objection. But the story did not end there. The year after (1621), that Huguenot saw the missions given in a nearby village of Marchais. He had a moment of conversion. He went to Vincent and wanted to be re-admitted to the Church.

But on the day of his readmission, he felt another objection: he could not believe in those statues of stone of Mary and the saints which he saw in the church. To answer him, Vincent called in a child in the congregation to explain to him how we understand these statues. It is said that after this, the convert remained a holy man to the end of his life.

What was significant for me in this narrative is that the child—the weakest, the most inarticulate, abused and neglected, the poorest of the poor in the church assembly—it was this child who enlightened him. The vulnerable child who, in these most recent times, is found at the center of our Church’s crisis because of abuse and neglect, ironically becomes the source of our enlightenment and hope.

EMPOWERING THE CHURCH OF THE POOR

It is in the empowerment of the poor alone that we can call ourselves the “Church of the poor.” It would be a happy development when the ministers of the church and its structures find themselves in the peripheries and become the voice of the voiceless.

But when this happens, we have to remember that we are not there yet. We cannot be the voice of the voiceless forever.

We pray and work for the time when the poor and the vulnerable possess the strength to speak boldly for themselves, when they acquire the courage to stand up for their rights, when they can freely and joyfully articulate God’s presence in our midst in their own theological language and not in ours.

For the “Church of the poor” is one where the poor are not only helped but empowered to become helpers, are not only evangelized but have also become evangelizers.

Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, C.M.

Adamson University

Manila