ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 22, 25 September 1885, Page 7

ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.

The following brief has recently been issued :—

LEO XIII., POPE. AD PERPETUAM RBI MBMOBIAM.

Jesus Christ, who has given to mankind various commandments for safe conduct in the way of life, never ceased to insist upon the commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves. Being Himself Love, He taught that love is the foundation on which rests the whole law, and the sign whereby may be known from other men the disciples of Christian wisdom. It is not surprising, therefore, that the supreme virtue of love and charity, of which the property is thought for others, and which is the mother and- nurse of all the virtues, should have particularly filled the hearts of those who have devoted themselves to attaining the perfection of graces by walking in the steps of the Divine Master.

Among such men shone oat with an altogether peculiar radiance at the end of the sixteenth century, Vincent de Paul, that great and immortal model of Christian charity, who by the merit of that virtue acquired for himself an incomparable glory. There is, indeed, no form of human misery that his charity did not succour ; there is no kind of toil that he did not grasp with joy for the service and the comfort of bis brothers.

And when Vincent left this world to go up into heaven, the source of his good works was not dried up, for it flows ever widely, and in abundance, as by many streams, through the fields of the Church of God.

He, in his high sanctity, strove not only to practise charity himself, but to bring into his own way many men and women, some of them gathered together in the religious life, and some united in pious associations to which he gave his wise directions. It is ea9y to see what abundant fruits human society receives every day from these works of his. The associations of St. Vincent had not been two centuries in existence when they had been already propagated in almost all parts of the world, gaining everywhere the admiration which is due to them. Everyone knows that the disciples of the Saint are ready to help all the unfortunate. They are at the bedsides of the miserable in hospitals ; they are in prisons, they are in schools, they are on the fields of battle, doing their double labour of love — charity to the soul and charity to the body. Therefore have the Roman Pontiffs, our predecessors, held in honour and watched over with special tenderness the congregations and associations of St. Vincent de Paul, together with mauy undertakings and labours of charity, which, though not bearing his name, had their origin with him.

We, too, following the example of those who have gone before us, with the desire that all such societies may take a still larger measure of the spirit of their founder and father ; and giving ear, moreover, to the particular prayer of our brothers, the bishops of France— we have already declared and constituted St. Vincent de Paul the heavenly patron of all such associations existing in France. And this decree was extended last year to the tSees of Ireland, in answer to the pious wishes of tbe Irish prelates.

But recently a great number of cardinals of tbe Holy Roman Church, and Bishops from almost every part of the world, together with general superiors of religious congregations, have besought us to give the same decree effect in all tbe countries of the Christian world where charities of the same kind are carried on. Having, therefore, taken counsel wi'h the Cardinals of tbe Sacred Congregation of Rite*, we have disposed ourselves to give a favourable reply to these pious requests.

Desiring thus to add to the good of the Universal Church, to increase the gloiy of God, and to re-kindle in all hearth the zeal of charity, we, in virtue of the Apostolic authority, declare and constitute by these letters. St. Vincent de Paul the special phtion at the Throne of God of all the associations of charity existing in the Catholic world and deriving from him in any manner whatever ; and we desire that to him may be re idered all tns honours that are paid to the great Patrons of Heaven.

We order that these letters shall be beld as authentic and effectual, and shall bave from this time their full and eutire force, and that their authority shall be absolute for the present and tbe future. And this notwitbs'anding all constitutions or decrees or other Apostolic acts to tbe contrary. We order, moreover, that manuscript copies of these letters, if furnished with the seal of an ecclesiastical dignitary, may have the same weight as the originals.

Given in Borne, at St. Peter's, under the Fisherman's Seal, in the eighth year of our Pontificate.

M. Cabd. Ledochowski.