vincentian studies

International Symposium: Religious Orders, Public Health and Disease

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In the current Covid-19 pandemic context, the symposium will consider how religious orders have played a key role in societies that had to deal with diseases that disrupted their lives or were part of their almost everyday life. Many paths will be explored to promote religious orders’ dynamic historiography by emphasizing a comparative and transnational approach to their history. The scope of the symposium will range from the Black Death to the present day. The symposium will take place through video-conference. 

This symposium is co-sponsored by the Vincentian Studies Institute and is organized by the Department of Catholic Studies, Emanuele Colombo, and the Dennis Holtschneider Chair, Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnée.

Click here to register for this event.

Registration ends May 18th.

Schedule:

Thursday, May 20, 2021
8:45-11:45 am, US Central Standard Time (CST)

  • Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnée (DePaul University),
    “We can only be saved together” (Pope Francis): What can we learn from Pandemics?
  • Karen Scott (DePaul University),
    “Se la mortalità v’è”: Catherine of Siena’s Advice to Dominican Preachers in Times of Plague
  • Emma Wall (Durham University),
    Disease Management in an International Context: The Venerable English College and the 1656– 57 Plague Epidemic in Rome
  • Mateusz Zimny (Pontifical University John Paul II, Krakow),
    The Order of the Holy Spirit de Saxia and its Hospital in Krakow
  • Emanuele Colombo (DePaul University),
    Mission at the Time of Cholera: Jesuits in Nineteenth-Century Italy

Friday, May 21, 2021
8:45-11:45 am, US Central Standard Time (CST)

  • Kristien Suenens (KADOC-KU Leuven),
    Sisters and the ‘Blue Death’: Female Religious and Cholera-Epidemics in Nineteenth-Century Belgium
  • Anne Jusseaume (Université d’Artois),
    Female Congregations and Nineteenth-Century Cholera in Paris
  • Thomas Rzeznik (Seton Hall University),
    The History of Community Medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital (NYC)
  • Francis Davis (University of Oxford),
    Witches, Wise or Diseased: Aspects of Being ‘Vulnerable’ in Rwanda and Singapore

 

“In Memoriam: Rev. Stafford Poole, C.M.

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Rev. Stafford Poole, C.M., Ph.D.
6 March 1930 – 1 November 2020

Joseph Poole and his wife Beatrice Smith welcomed a son into the world, Richard Stafford, on March 6, 1930, who was baptized in his parish church of St. Charles Borromeo, in North Hollywood. He attended elementary school at Rio Vista Elementary School, then transferred to the Parish School of St. Charles Borromeo for his Junior High School years. He entered Los Angeles College, the precursor to Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary in 1942. Stafford entered the Congregation of the Mission on October 7, 1947, and continued his philosophical and theological studies for ordination at St. Mary of the Barrens Seminary in Perryville, Mo. He was ordained to the priesthood on May 27, 1956. He earned the degree of Master of Arts from St. Louis University in 1958 with a major in Spanish Literature and in 1961 earned his Doctor of Philosophy in U.S. and Mexican History from St. Louis University.

As he was completing his doctoral studies, Fr. Poole was planning on researching Slaveholding in Catholic Missouri. However, God intervened. Fr. Bannon, the director of the history department was presented with some rare documents from Latin America that included documents from the Third Council of 1585 and presented Stafford with a project. In Stafford’s own words he describes what happened next:

The next time I walked into Bannon’s office, my life took a total reversal. I got working on it and became fascinated with the whole thing. But actually, I had had only one graduate course in Latin American history, and that was a survey. Other than that, I was self-taught.1

From these beginnings flowed an impressive contribution to the field of Catholicism in Colonial Latin America, as well as his works on the history of the Congregation of the Mission and the US Catholic Church. Included in his life’s work were 14 books, 23 publications in Anthologies and Encyclopedias, 62 journal articles, as well as some unpublished studies on Vincentian themes and numerous book reviews. Among Fr. Poole’s works are Seminary in Crisis (1964); Church and Slave in Perry County, Missouri 1818 – 1860 (co-authored with Douglas Slawson, 1986); and Our Lady of Guadalupe: Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531 – 1797 (1995). Fr. Poole was also a longtime member of the DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute, and served as the editor of Vincentian Heritage and other of their publications over many years. In 2006 he received the Institute’s prestigious Pierre Coste Prize for his lifetime of distinguished achievement in Vincentian Studies.

While many would count this a complete life’s work, Fr. Poole was also a teacher, academic dean, and seminary rector. His students not only remember his lectures with fondness, but also appreciated his wit and wisdom. Stafford was a clock maker. He spent his leisure time making and repairing clocks of all sorts. After he had left St. Mary of the Barrens in 1971, students would comment that “Fr. Poole needs to come back to the Barrens to fix the clock on the A Building!”

During his retirement, Fr. Poole continued to be active as a scholar and mentor. He encouraged other confreres to take up the critical history of the Congregation of the Mission. He supported his colleagues in both the American Catholic Historical Association and other professional organizations to continue the study the Church’s earliest mission activity in Latin America and its impact upon the people.

Infirmity overcame Fr. Poole in his final years, as his health declined, he slowly put aside the unfinished research and prepared to meet his Creator. He returned to the Barrens to receive added care. On the Feast Day of All Saints, he returned to his Creator. A Vincentian who dedicated his life to telling the story of the life of Colonial Latin American Church and the Little Company.

1) Susan Schroeder, “Seminaries and Writing the History of New Spain: An Interview with Stafford Poole, C.M.,” The Americas 69:2 (2012), 237-254.

The Vincentian Studies Institute in the Division of Mission & Ministry Vincentian Heritage Journal: A Call for Proposals Proposal Submission Deadline: July 31, 2020

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2020: DePaul University’s Community Responds to Crises

The DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute would like to invite everyone from our community—faculty, staff, students, and alumni—to participate in a special call to submit publishable materials dedicated to the unprecedented crises we have been challenged to confront in 2020. Covid-19 has disrupted daily life and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. At DePaul it has forced us to change how we work, how we teach, and how we learn. How has it changed you? Our nation has also erupted in protests over the brutal killing of George Floyd. His senseless death has reignited the Black Lives Matter movement and challenges us as a people to dismantle inequality, oppression, and systemic racism in the pursuit of justice. How has this affected you, your colleagues, or your family? How has your perception of DePaul, of Chicago, of our country, been changed? Considering both crises and their effect on marginalized peoples how do we see that they interplay? How can we move forward? How can our Vincentian values help guide us through this time of great pain and suffering? Ultimately, we would like to know, how have we responded as a Vincentian higher learning community?

What We Are Asking of You

We are asking for your contributions in the hope that they help us to reflect on what has happened and is still happening. Every type of production is welcomed: academic papers, short essays, poems, fiction, paintings, photographs, videos, etc. Individual or collective proposals are welcomed. Shorter works will be featured online, promoted by the Division of Mission & Ministry, and shared with the university community. Longer written works may be featured in a special collection published in the VSI’s scholarly journal Vincentian Heritage.

Process to Contribute

  • We ask that you submit your Proposal or short summary of your intended contribution, to: nmichaud@depaul.edu Please do so before July 31, 2020.
  • Proposals will be reviewed by the VSI board and you will be notified of their decision by August 21, 2020.
  • Once accepted, final drafts of your contributed work must be received by January 15, 2021.

DePaul Names Holtschneider Chair in Vincentian Studies at Anniversary Celebration

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Left to right, Salma Ghanem, interim provost, Dr. Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnée, chair professor of the Dennis Holtschneider Chair and Guillermo Vásquez de Velasco, dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, are photographed after the presentation of the Inaugural Chair Lecture of the Holtschneider Endowed Chair. In addition, DePaul University celebrate the 40th year anniversary of the Vincentian Studies Institute, Tuesday, Sept. 23, at Cortelyou Commons in DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus. (DePaul University/Randall Spriggs)

 

Last month, the university celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Vincentian Studies Institute. Founded in 1979 and sponsored by DePaul as part of the Division of Mission and Ministry, the Vincentian Studies Institute promotes a living interest in the heritage of the Vincentian Family, established by St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac.

 

Read the rest of the article here.