2024 Foundation Day: The Shared Coin

On January 25 in celebration of Foundation Day, a new edition of The Shared Coin was released.  This tradition is an invitation for all DePaul students, faculty and staff to celebrate individuals living DePaul’s Vincentian mission by sharing a coin with them. Along with the coin, givers are encouraged to personalize this experience by using the back of the card given out with each coin to write a message to the individual they are acknowledging.

This is a special way to tell someone else, “I see you! I see DePaul’s mission and the Vincentian spirit within you.  That light is radiating out to me. Thank you.  I think it is important that I acknowledge you.” It’s an opportunity for everyone in the community to pause, look around, and recognize the many gifts at DePaul.  

The Shared Coin is modeled after Vincent’s metaphor of the scarred coin, which represented the individuals he served, their inherent dignity, and the investment he made in honoring and uplifting that dignity. 

The 2024 edition of the Shared Coin uplifts a quote by St. Louise de Marillac to celebrate the 400th anniversary of her lumiere experience. On June 4, 1623, Louise de Marillac, filled with doubts and anxiety about her life, entered the Church of Saint Nicholas-des-Champs in Paris. As a young wife with a child and a sick husband, she prayed for her future. Something extraordinary happened there. She experienced a moment of light that changed her life and filled her with a trust that there was a plan for her life. She was freed from her anxiety and doubts and received inner peace. Louise’s “lumiere” experience is an invitation for all of us to root ourselves in trust and to hold on to the light within and around us.

Everyone within the DePaul community is encouraged to integrate this tradition across campus, whether through weekly meetings, gatherings or one-on-one settings. Recipients often feel grateful for the recognition of their good work and their commitment to DePaul’s mission. 

Coin recipients may elect to keep it or may choose to pass it on when they see someone else living the mission in a meaningful way. Any DePaul student, faculty or staff member can go to one of our distribution locations and pick up coins to share with a person or several people they witness living DePaul’s mission. Coins are available on a first come, first-served basis. They are available in limited quantities and once depleted, they will not be available until the following year.  You may pick up coins at the following locations: 

Lincoln Park Location
Division of Mission and Ministry
Student Center, Suite 311
10-4 PM, Monday through Friday 

Loop Location
DePaul Center 125, Loop Life Office
10AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Division of Mission and Ministry - by request
14 E. Jackson, Suite 800  

For more information on this tradition, visit go.depaul.edu/sharedcoin

“Encourage one another and may your mutual good example speak louder than any words can.” St. Louise de Marillac

St. Vincent’s Extraordinary Pragmatism

Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Vincent de Paul from whom we derive our name, vision, mission, and identity.

St. Vincent was a visionary. He understood the realities of his time and saw new possibilities for his world within the massive socio-economic and religious chaos of 17th century French society. As he searched for meaning and direction in his own life, he found purpose and direction that always guided his vision and extraordinary pragmatism.

The practical ways of St. Vincent de Paul focused entirely on societal and church transformation by establishing communities dedicated to serving and healing those most in need. The work of St. Vincent de Paul, of some 400 years ago, focused on a new, transformed society, and this should resonate with us today, as we try to respond to our current and chaotic times.

Designing DePaul, our opportunity to shape our own society, allows us to be in touch with the inner soul of DePaul University. During this time of institutional conversation, we acknowledge the values in which we are founded and our collective dreams. We commit to being an educational institution that contributes to social mobility, breaking the cycle of poverty, designing for equity, responding to the challenges of artificial intelligence and technological development, caring for and protecting our planet, and educating leaders capable of generating a societal model where hate and violence have no place.

As you carry out your work, research, and studies this year, please consider the following four elements, which summarize the essence of St. Vincent de Paul as we embrace his heritage today:

  • Focus on a mission-centered horizon. This necessitates understanding your unique contributions to DePaul, firmly grasping the realities of the current situation and institutional needs, and yet also dreaming of what could be and leveraging ethical imagination to move beyond the world we know to what it could become.
  • Create people-centered approaches to all you do as we drive forward the initiatives within Designing DePaul. The wellbeing, the joy, and the fulfillment of individuals in a healthy environment will organically lead to a vibrant organization and better outcomes for those we serve.
  • Amplify a sense of co-responsibility, solidarity, and collaboration at all levels as the goals of St. Vincent de Paul. Our individual work and studies are all a part of an institutional fabric. They are interconnected in explicit and implicit ways because we all serve the same purpose, the same common good, and the same mission.
  • Develop strategies that are implementation-oriented, that respond effectively to real issues based on lived experience, and that systemically address solutions following the model of St. Vincent and the very spirit of our students. At DePaul our students demand that we not only ask the Vincentian question of “what must be done?” but that we also develop our response by understanding the current situation and data-based needs, by adopting a willingness to innovate and break out of old ways of thinking, and by changing our assumptions as we get new information.

And as we say, “Happy Feast Day,” let us also embrace the spirit of St. Vincent in everything we do, and also say to each other, “DePaul – be pragmatic, in a Vincentian way.”

Robert L. Manuel
President

Fr. Guillermo (Memo) Campuzano, C.M.
Vice President for Mission and Ministry

Vinny Fest 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are so excited to celebrate Vinny Fest 2023! Vinny Fest is a DePaul tradition to honor and celebrate St. Vincent de Paul’s legacy with fun, games, photos with Vincent, t-shirts, free food, and more! This year we are excited to also celebrate with the Loop Mini Vinny Fest on Tuesday, September 26 from 2-4PM in the DePaul Center Concourse. We can’t wait to celebrate with you on Friday, September 29 from 2-4PM on the LPC Quad! See the Vinny Fest Promo Video Below:

Vincent de Paul Heritage Week 2023

Vincent was a trailblazer, a true change agent of his day. He was a man who saw hope and possibility despite the challenges of his time. He felt a keen dissatisfaction in the gap between the way the world should be and the way the world was. Throughout his 79 years, Vincent sought to close that divide, asking “what must be done” and acting on the answers he found. Four hundred years later, DePaul University continues to carry forward his legacy by educating the next generation of trailblazers. 

During Vincentian Heritage Week the Division of Mission and Ministry will host the key events below.

 

Sunday Night Mass & BBQ

Sunday, September 24
Mass | 5:00pm | St. Vincent DePaul Parish
BBQ | 6:00pm | St. Vincent DePaul Parish Lawn

Join Catholic Campus Ministry and St. Vincent de Paul Parish for a (free) BBQ on the Parish Lawn (on Webster Ave.) to celebrate the Feast Day, directly following 5pm mass. Whether you go to Mass weekly, occasionally, or have never been to a Catholic Mass, you are welcome here! Come celebrate!

Walk ins are welcome, you may RSVP if you would like here.

 

Loop Mini Vinny Fest

Tuesday, September 26 | 2:00-4:00pm | DePaul Center Concourse

Join Office of Student Involvement and Mission and Ministry for Loop Mini Vinny Fest! Celebrate our namesake’s Feast Day and DePaul University with fun, games, photos, caricatures and more!  This is a DePaul tradition you don’t want to miss!

RSVP here

 

Loop Feast Day Mass & Morning Refreshments

Wednesday, September 27
Mass | 8:30am | Miraculous Medal Chapel (Lewis Center)
Refreshments | 9:30am | 1001 Lewis Center

For those wishing to attend mass celebrating St. Vincent de Paul’s Feast Day, mass will be held in the Miraculous Medal Chapel (Lewis Center – First Floor) with light refreshments after mass. All are welcome!

 

Lincoln Park Feast Day Mass & Lunch

Wednesday, September 27
Mass |12:00pm | St. Louise de Marillac Chapel
Lunch | 12:45pm | CCM Student Center Suite 104

Celebrate our namesake’s Feast Day with a celebratory mass at 12:00pm in the St. Louise de Marillac Chapel. Join us afterwards for lunch across the hall in Catholic Campus Ministry (Student Center – Suite 104). Everyone is welcome!

Walk ins are welcome, you may RSVP if you would like here.

 

St. Vincent DePaul Heritage Week Luncheon

Wednesday, September 27 | 12 – 1:30 pm | Loop DePaul Center, The DePaul Club

Join the DePaul community at our annual St. Vincent de Paul Heritage Luncheon as we look at the timely issue of migration. How is migration presenting urgent needs in our city, how is and can DePaul University respond to these needs and what does our Vincentian mission call us to do? Presenting will be leaders from the DePaul community including Fr. Memo Campuzano, CM, Vice President of Mission and Ministry as well as Sioban Albiol and Shailja Sharma, directors of the DePaul Migration Collaborative. We will also hear from those working directly with new arrivals and from someone who has recently migrated to Chicago to learn about their firsthand experience.

This luncheon will take place at The DePaul Club on the 11th floor of The DePaul Center at the Loop Campus beginning at Noon. We will also be hosting the conversation via Zoom, for those who cannot be with us in person. We hope you will join us!

RSVP here

 

St. Vincent DePaul Prayer Breakfast

Friday, September 29 | 9:00am – 11:00 am | Student Center 120 A & B

Come celebrate our shared Vincentian heritage with delicious food and great community at our annual St. Vincent de Paul Prayer Breakfast! This year, we will welcome as our keynote speaker, Dr. Sulin Ba, the Dean of the Driehaus College of Business who will share how she integrates the mission into her professional and personal life. This will be a great chance to meet Dr. Ba and join together in community, gathered together for the sake of a mission. All are welcome! 

RSVP here

 

Vinny Fest

Friday, September 29 | 2:00pm – 4:00pm | Lincoln Park Quad & St. Vincent’s Circle

Join us for Vinny Fest 2023, a DePaul tradition to honor and celebrate St. Vincent de Paul’s legacy with fun, games, photos with Vincent, free food, and more! Vinny Fest features student organizations, offices, and departments as they host engaging activities to celebrate our mission in action as a DePaul community. Follow @mmatmdepaul to stay up to date.

Committing to a Mission beyond Ourselves

I recently had the good fortune of accompanying leaders from DePaul, St. John’s, and Niagara, the three American Vincentian universities, to France for a Vincentian Heritage tour. The trip was a culmination of their COVID-extended participation in the Vincentian Mission Institute program, and it was the first Heritage tour involving DePaul faculty and staff since 2019.

The trip gave me an opportunity to reflect more intentionally and vividly on Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Frédéric Ozanam, and others in the Vincentian Family over the past 400+ years and their relationship to our current work at DePaul University. There were many striking insights for me during the experience, often connected to a deepened appreciation for the enduring legacy of Vincent de Paul, the “Lazarists” (Vincentians), and the Daughters of Charity throughout much of France. Certainly, the many churches we visited in Paris and beyond display numerous images, statues, paintings, and plaques that commemorate Vincent and his impact. Yet Vincent’s visible and sustained presence clearly goes beyond church walls. His life and work as a priest had a broader effect on French society, and he even gained the respect of the antireligious revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. He was a public religious figure whose service rippled outward to the peripheries of society where the poor and otherwise forgotten dwelled.

The trip to Vincent’s birthplace in Dax and to the site of his university education in Toulouse invited reflection on his young adult development and early priesthood. We saw the important site of Folleville, on the former lands of the de Gondi family, where Vincent had a transformative experience, where we frequently imagine Madame de Gondi posing the memorable “Vincentian question.” We remembered the foundation of the enduring model of the Confraternities of Charity when visiting Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne. And we walked through the streets of Paris to places that touched on the memory of Frédéric Ozanam and the founding of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. Moreover, it seemed everywhere we went, we found the continued presence and the historical echoes of the Daughters of Charity, including Louise, Catherine Labouré, and Rosalie Rendu.

So, why does all this history still matter so much to us now? Why would we spend extended time in present-day France walking in the footsteps of the founders of the Vincentian tradition?

What ultimately matters in this exploration of our history is that we become inspired to carry on the Vincentian legacy in concrete ways through our lives and work today because, quite simply, our world still desperately needs it. Our Vincentian mission is as compelling now as it was 400 years ago: to sustain and enliven a community of people dedicated to service, charity, justice, and a purpose beyond themselves.

For generations now, Vincent, Louise, Frédéric, and others in the Vincentian Family have asked what it would mean for us to orient our time, our efforts, our intentions, and our vision more radically around the values reflected in the Jesus of the Gospels. Their enduring legacy reflects their response to this question.

Regardless of our religious convictions or the nature of our work, the legacy of Vincent, Louise, and the Vincentian Family invites each of us to ask:

  • How might we orient our lives so that our life and work manifest the generosity, service, and care for others reflected in the living spirit of our Vincentian predecessors?
  • What can we put in place that will outlast us, that will endure for the betterment of the common good?
  • How can we build and inspire the community of people that is DePaul University to be focused on this mission together, and in so doing, to address the larger societal needs of today?

Like those of our predecessors, may our responses to these questions be proclaimed through our actions.


Reflection by: Mark Laboe, Assoc. VP for Mission and Ministry

Vincentian Studies Institute Revises Additional Texts of Vincent de Paul

DePaul University continues its support of Vincentian scholarship with a new revision of our four volumes of additional, mainly unpublished texts by and about Saint Vincent de Paul. This revision includes multiple new documents added across all four volumes along with corrections and updates to the existing texts. The translator and editor is John E. Rybolt, C.M. The books supplement the fourteen volumes of Correspondence, Conferences, and Documents, published by Pierre Coste, C.M., over a century ago.

These fully searchable, free to download pdf e-Books total more than 4,500 pages of letters, conferences, and documents in their original languages of French, Latin, and Italian, followed by an English translation.

These texts represent an open-ended collection, allowing for additional texts to be added as they come to light, as well as corrections and updates. We welcome suggestions and input from the reading public.

Click through to access each new volume of the collection:

Correspondence: CCD Additional Texts

Conferences: CCD Additional Texts

Documents, part one: CCD Additional Texts

Documents, part two: CCD Additional Texts

It is hoped that these new texts will further our understanding and appreciation of the great saint of charity, Vincent de Paul.

New Issue of Vincentian Heritage Available for Download

The DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute is pleased to announce the publication of our newest peer-reviewed e-book edition of Vincentian Heritage (Volume 36, Number 1).

Of note, this edition features articles on the lives of François Lallier and Emmanuel Bailly, co-founders with Frédéric Ozanam of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. It also includes a fascinating translation of the newly discovered “Rule for the Hospital of Nom de Jésus,” offering commentary on its historical context and on the caregiving provided there by the Daughters of Charity. Finally, the book concludes with a lavishly illustrated art and architectural study of the history of the Chapelle des Lazaristes, the Congregation of the Mission’s motherhouse church in Paris.

  • “François Lallier (1814–1886): ‘One of the Pillars of the Building Started’” by Raymond Sickinger, Ph.D.
  • “Emmanuel Bailly: The Advisor and Friend of Christian Youth” by Ralph Middlecamp.
  • “‘So that they may be able to live and die as good Christians’: The Early History of the Nom de Jésus Hospital in Catholic Reformation Paris” by Alison Forrestal, Ph.D.
  • “The Chapelle des Lazaristes and Reliquary Shrine of St. Vincent de Paul, 1850 to 1860: An Exposé of Competing Aesthetic Schemes & Their Resolutions in the Alliance des Arts” by Simone Zurawski, Ph.D.

To download the complete book for iPad or PC, please click here: Full Book Download

Individual .pdfs for each article are also available for download here: Article Downloads & Repository

 

January 25 – Anniversary of the Foundation of the Congregation of the Mission by Vincent de Paul

Revitalizing our Identity at the beginning of the Fifth Century of the Congregation of the Mission” — Theme of the C.M. XLIII General Assembly 2022

 

Each year on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, we remember the beginning of the Congregation of the Mission (C.M.). According to St. Vincent de Paul, this happened in Folleville, France, on January 25, 1617, when he preached his “first sermon of the Mission.”(1) Many say that experience with a dying man transformed Vincent’s heart and imbued him with a desire to serve those in need.

This historical event is an important one for DePaul University, though it is not widely celebrated. The Congregation of the Mission (commonly called “Vincentians”) founded our university 123 years ago. DePaul’s history and identity are deeply linked to the values and convictions of the Congregation in the United States.

Originally, Vincent founded the Congregation of the Mission to provide direct service to all those living in poverty, especially “the most abandoned,”(2) and for the formation and education of Catholic clergy in need of reform. These original intentions have evolved with time, especially over the past 50 years.

Today the Congregation of the Mission works together with many other branches of the Vincentian Family. This wider family includes the Daughters of Charity and other orders of religious sisters, as well as lay members of the worldwide International Association of Charities, and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. They comprise an ever-growing network of people and organizations who provide direct spiritual and material service, advocacy, and the promotion of systemic change.

In many ways, the primary Vincentian mission along with its communal approach have not changed. To better respond to all kinds of needs Vincent summoned as many as he could, rich, poor, humble, and powerful, and used all means to inspire them to serve people living in poverty.(3) As a Catholic priest, Vincent privileged the image of Christ. Based on the Gospel of Luke, ‘the evangelizer of the poor’ [Luke 4, 16-22], he prompted all his collaborators to help the poor directly and indirectly as Jesus did.

The Congregation of the Mission, from the time of Vincent de Paul, and through his inspiration, recognizes itself as called by God to carry out the work of integrally serving the poor. Officially called “Congregatio Missionis,” they are also called “Vincentians” in Anglophone countries, “Paules” in Spain, “Missioners” in Slavic lands, and in Latin America they are known as “Vicentinos.” The unofficial motto of the Congregation: Evangelizare pauperibus misit me [He has sent me to evangelize the poor] sums up the works of Jesus the Congregation endeavors to follow.

While we celebrate the founding of the Congregation of the Mission in 1617, the official date of its institution is noted to be April 17, 1625. On that day, encouraged by Madame de Gondi, the lords of the Gondi family, in whose territories Vincent de Paul served as Chaplain, signed a contract with him in which they provided funding to support a group of priests to serve impoverished people in the countryside. This act gave needed economic sustainability to the project of the Congregation.

Vincent ultimately created the community he had dreamed of. By the day of his death, September 27, 1660, twenty-six Vincentian communities had been formed: nineteen in France, four in Italy, two in Barbary (Northern Africa), and one in Poland. And, by the time of the French Revolution of 1789, when religious communities were suppressed in France, a great dissemination of the Congregation had taken place around the world, with missions in the Middle East, in Asia, and soon thereafter in the Americas. Especially significant were the Congregation’s missionary efforts in China. Today the Congregation has more than 3,000 members, priests, and brothers, serving in 81 countries. They continue to provide a wide array of services including education, spiritual and pastoral care, direct service to the poor, and socio-political advocacy, while remaining dedicated to systemic change and collaborations that will end poverty and homelessness.

As we know, one of their projects was DePaul University, founded in 1898 to serve the children of immigrants in Chicago who needed both access to education and a chance to escape poverty. Without Foundation Day, DePaul as we know it would not exist. That it does, and that we are now a part of more than two million Vincentian Family members worldwide, is certainly something worth celebrating on the 25th.


1) Conference 112, Repetition of Prayer, 25 January 1655, CCD, 11:162-164.

2) Conference 164, Love for the Poor, January 1657, CCD, 11:349.

3) See, for example, Constitutions and Statutes of the Congregation of the Mission (Rome, 1984), 10. Online at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/cm_construles/23/

 

Reflection by Rev. Guillermo Campuzano, C.M., Vice President of Mission and Ministry

 

The Streets as a Cloister: History of the Daughters of Charity

The Vincentian Studies Institute is extremely pleased to promote the publication of our colleague and fellow board member’s new work. Dr. Brejon de Lavergnée is a Professor of History and ​the Dennis H. Holtschneider Chair of Vincentian Studies at DePaul University.

“The Daughters of Charity are today the largest community of Catholic women, with 15,000 sisters in about 100 countries. They devote their lives to serving the poorest in hospitals, schools, and care centers for homeless or migrants, as well as working to promote social justice. Until now, however, the history of the Daughters of Charity has been almost wholly neglected. The opening of their central archives, combined with access to many public and private archives, has finally allowed this to be remedied.

This volume, the fruit of several years’ work, covers the history of the Company from its foundation by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac as a confraternity of young women to the suppression of the order during the French Revolution. The study, at the juncture of women’s history and religious history, shows how much the Daughters of Charity contributed to the emergence of a new and ambiguous status in post-Tridentine society: neither cloistered nuns nor married women, but “seculars.” The Company has certainly offered a framework that enabled many resolute women to lead lives out of the ordinary, taking young peasant women to the royal court, intrepid hearts to Poland, and, more generally, generous souls to the “martyrdom of charity” among the poor and the ill.”

ISBN Number: 978-1-56548-027-8. 668 pages. Available at Amazon.com or directly from the publisher: The Streets as a Cloister

To read an interview with Dr. Brejon de Lavergnée about his new book and the Daughters of Charity, please see Crux: Taking the Catholic Pulse

Vincentian Heritage Journal Vol. 35, No. 2

The DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute is pleased to announce the publication of our newest peer-reviewed e-book edition of Vincentian Heritage (Volume 35, Number 2).

Of note, this edition includes a significant new translation, never before published, of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet’s testimony on the virtuous life of Vincent de Paul. The document, at one time thought lost, follows after those prepared for the canonization process and offers insight from a man who knew the saint during his life. The book also advances our new design and features the following articles:

  • “Pa, Ma, and Fa: Private Lives of Nineteenth-Century American Vincentians,” by John E. Rybolt, C.M., Ph.D.
  • “Bishop John Timon, C.M., Sisters of Charity Hospital, and the Cholera Epidemic of 1849,” by Dennis Castillo, Ph.D.
  • “Elizabeth Ann Seton’s Vision of Ecological Community. Based on Elizabeth Bayley Seton: Collected Writings, Volume Two,” by Sung-Hae Kim, S.C.
  • “BOSSUET: Testimony Concerning the Life and the Eminent Virtues of Monsieur Vincent de Paul (1702),” Translation and additional annotation by Edward R. Udovic, C.M., Ph.D.

To download the complete book for iPad or PC, please click here.

Individual .pdfs for each article are also available for download here.