Discovering Vincent

After reading all about DePaul University’s Vincentian Heritage Tour on this blog, you may wonder why the university invests time and resources into these trips.

On one hand, there is a concern over what will become of the university’s Catholic and Vincentian identity now that there are fewer than 270 Vincentians remaining in the United States today and that all Vincentian priests and brothers are expected to be gone in 20 to 25 years.

In a way, the fact that there are fewer Vincentian priests with each passing year “is relatively unimportant,” says the Rev. Edward Udovic, C.M., senior executive for university mission. The “C.M.” that appears after his name stands for the “Congregation of the Mission.” In Latin, it is “congregationis missionis,” and the literal translation of that is “a gathering of people for the sake of the mission,” notes Udovic. “So from that perspective, every single person at DePaul University is a Vincentian, because we’re all gathered here for the sake of the mission at DePaul University.”

The way we live up to that as faculty and staff, Udovic says, is to make the mission “real and effective in the lives of all those 23,000 students who walked through the front doors this morning and make sure we do everything that we can do in terms of accessibility, affordability and attainment” of education.

The Vincentian Heritage Tours give every participant insight into the life, work and beliefs of St. Vincent de Paul. “It gives them insight into the values that no other means can do,” says Udovic. This particular trip was for faculty and staff, but tours also are offered to different groups, including students and the university’s board of trustees.

As a historian, Udovic appreciates the value, for example, of reading about events such as the Battle of Gettysburg, “but all of that takes on an incredibly different feeling when you actually are at the battlefield. Ultimately, that’s what these trips are about.”

Now, a word from Joop

Remember when I was taking a poll of French people to get a feel for how many people in France actually know of St. Vincent de Paul? Well, I'm posting this video of Joop Timmers, our motorcoach driver and tour operator. Technically, he is Dutch, but since he runs the tours for DePaul all over France, I thought I should at least interview him to find out what he knows about St. Vincent. Here is the video:

A Movable Feast

JOIGNY, FRANCE (Aug. 16)—We left Beaune this morning to start making our way back to Paris. It’s sad that our trip is almost over. I will miss you, France.

Before we left at 9 a.m. though, we had about an hour to shop in a local outdoor market where I purchased some soaps, lavender and a large, dense, delicious chocolate cake to bring back home.

Our plans call for visiting Joigny, France, this morning to take in our last Vincentian sites of the trip. Though we were a little behind schedule, the Rev. Edward Udovic, C.M., said they had a surprise in store for us.

We were still on the bus when the Rev. John Rybolt, C.M., asked us each to take the microphone and share with the group our thoughts about the trip. One person after another commented on how this was the trip of a lifetime and thanked Fathers Rybolt and Udovic for all they did to make the experience possible and memorable.

DePaul faculty member Camilla Fojas said it brought St. Vincent to life for her. “It’s turned history into something that’s living and breathing,” said faculty member Michael DeAngelis. Another colleague Eric Nelson said no matter how much we all talk about St. Vincent and Vincentian values, there was always a missing piece—until this trip.

It was very touching to hear exactly how my colleagues were moved by the experience. Many tied aspects of St. Vincent’s work to the work they do at DePaul—in areas ranging from the graduate program in social work to fundraising for the university. Father Rybolt told us that a sense of the Vincentian mission will permeate what we do. “It’s everyone’s job, in a sense, to bring the results back,” he said.

Then it was time for our big surprise. Calling it “an artistic and spiritual aperitif before we get to Joigny,” Father Rybolt took us on a tour of La Ferté Loupière, a Romanesque church outside Joigny that featured a series of paintings from the Middle Ages that were not uncovered until just 100 years ago when some wood panels were being removed from the high walls of the church. These paintings depicting the “Danse Macabre,” or Dance of Death, were done in the 15th century, and they came right after the Black Death, when a lot of people clearly had death on their minds.


Danse Macabre is an allegory on the universality of death. The paintings show skeletons (death) dancing with a pope, a cardinal, a bishop, a king and other important people to illustrate that we are all united in death, no matter who we are, how rich and powerful we are, or what we do in life.

At first glance, the skeletons make the painting look scary. Overall though, it does have a mildly whimsical quality that attempts to make death less frightening to us all. It’s interesting that the paintings appear in a church. The thinking probably was that if you’re going to think about death, the sanctuary of a church is probably a good place to do it.

After our short visit there, it was on to Joigny, a city that sits on the banks of the River Yonne (which runs into the River Seine eventually). “I like Joigny a lot,” said Father Rybolt. We all did. It was very bonjour, to say the least. Joigny still preserves its historical charm but old and new collide as centuries-old houses are dotted with satellite dishes.

The Gondi family, which I’ve referred to in other blog posts, lived in Joigny, too, at different times, even though the family owned other properties in other parts of France. St. Vincent lived here, too, at one point.

Back in the day, the Gondis lived in a castle that still stands right next to L’Eglise Saint-Jean de Joigny, a church containing a magnificent marble carving commissioned by the Gondis between 1513 and 1518 of the Entombment of the Sepulchre of Christ with Seven Figures. “Museums would spend a fortune to get this thing,” noted Father Rybolt.


Very often in those days, castles of the very rich were located next to churches because they didn’t make a distinction between civil and ecclesiastical life, according to Father Rybolt. That’s probably because the rich supported the churches financially.

After walking by a place where St. Vincent lived, we ended up at Église Saint-André de Joigny. Father Rybolt was delighted to find the doors of the church were open so we could take a look around. It was a fairly simple old church with a lot of history to it. On one wall hung a medieval siege ladder that the locals put up to give thanks to God for allowing the villagers to successfully fend off an attack. That’s something you don’t see too often, remarked Father Rybolt.

And with that, we officially concluded our tour of Vincentian Heritage sites. With less than 24 hours remaining in France, it was now time to eat, drink and say our good byes.

THEMES, FRANCE (Aug. 16)—It’s about 5 p.m. and most of my colleagues are asleep on the motorcoach after an exquisite five-course lunch, or as one colleague called it a five-photo lunch (because I have been photographing every course I’ve had on this trip). We are making our way back to Paris on a two-hour bus ride. Tonight our driver Joop Timmers drives us to dinner at what is the oldest restaurant in Paris. Tomorrow morning he takes us to the airport, and voila, the trip ends!

The thought of getting ready for our farewell dinner in a few hours is too painful to think about because I am so stuffed at the moment. Don’t get me wrong. Le Petit Claridge in the town of Themes was probably the finest restaurant we’ve been to on this trip.

This is the kind of meal I would have tried to starve myself for had I been back home in Chicago. Sure, nobody is forcing me to eat it, but what kind of person would I be if I was in France and didn’t fully experience French cuisine? That’s one of the main things the French are known for.

So for lunch, we began with an amuse bouche of olive tapenade, whipped cream cheese, herring and olive oil loosely mixed in a beautiful clear glass.

Course two was a delicate ham and cheese crepe. I don’t eat pork, so I skipped this course, but still, it looked tempting.

Course three: beef in a brown mushroom sauce served with three new potatoes alternating with two pieces of jambon (ham) on skewers. The meal came with buffet-style vegetable concoction that was a little salty but incredibly tasty, buttery and rich. It included strips of eggplant and I don’t know what else, but it was fabulous.

Course four: A cheese plate of brie, goat cheese and a Swiss cheese with a small salad with pine nuts on the side.

Course five: A dessert trio. My personal favorite was what looked like a shot glass with an egg in it. All it was is mango syrup on top of a thick layer of cream that was put on top of a light sprinkling of ground vanilla bean on the bottom of the glass. My second favorite was a refreshing raspberry concoction that was like a melted sorbet that you sip out of an espresso cup.

After checking into our hotel in Roissy-en-France, near the Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, we had less than an hour to prepare for dinner—our last one together as a group.

ROISSY, FRANCE (Aug. 16)—I just retired to my room after dinner. We had a wonderful time at A la Petite Chaise. Founded in 1680, it claims to be the oldest restaurant in Paris. As full as we all were, we still managed to choke down some awesome food. We got to order from several choices off a menu.

As soon as we sat down, we were presented with a lovely glass of a sweet wine to start. My first course was a green mixed salad. Others had French onion soup or asparagus in a pastry shell. Each of us was happy with our choices.

After our first course, speeches were made in honor of Father Udovic, Father Rybolt and Joop for giving us such a memorable trip.

For the main course, I dined on salmon escallop with vegetables. Others enjoyed the duck or pepper steak. For dessert, I ordered the dessert of the day, which was strawberry mousse.

Others enjoyed “chocolate cake,” which really was chocolate mousse because it was so creamy.

During the course of the evening, I alternated between a delicious white wine and a smooth red. I couldn’t make up my mind, so I figured, why not have both? Our last night in Paris was not the night to start exercising great will power. We capped off dinner with a strong cup of espresso.

The evening was bittersweet. I have thoroughly enjoyed the company of this group of great DePaul faculty and staff, Fathers Rybolt and Udovic, and last but not least, Joop. We learned so much from Fathers Rybolt and Udovic. They succeeded in bringing St. Vincent to life for us. I will miss all my new friends.

The Feast of the Assumption

TOURNUS, FRANCE (Aug. 15)—We checked out of the hotel this morning and headed north to the region of France known as Bourgogne. We stopped in Tournus to see Abbaye Saint-Philibert, a magnificently restored Romanesque church.

As most of you know, Aug. 15 is the Feast of the Assumption, which is an important day in the Catholic religion. It celebrates the assumption of Mary’s body into heaven. It also is one of the holy days of obligation, which means that Catholics must go to Mass on this day. So as you would imagine, the church was PACKED. If it hadn’t been for all the people who turned out, you would never know that many people lived in this town. Here's a little video from inside the church.




So as not to disturb the worshippers, the Rev. John Rybolt, C.M., spoke softly in telling us about the church. He told us about the Roman floor mosaics and the massive “porch” that was added to the front of the church. He used the word “porch,” but what he was really talking about was a major addition of an enormous room (which is the one I am standing in throughout most of the video posted above). Then we all wandered around, so I took some pictures of the people in the church, listened to some of the Mass and then I made my way upstairs to see what the view was like from way up there.

BEAUNE, FRANCE (Aug. 15)—A short time later, we continued on to the town of Beaune, which is, indeed, très bon—and not just because it lies in the center of the Côte-d'Or wine-producing area. It was yet another very quaint French town.

Many businesses in Beaune and throughout France were closed because of the holy day. It’s odd that France is actually so Catholic for a country that prides itself on its secularism. Even big commercial trucks are not permitted to drive for the entire weekend because of the Catholic holy day, so they all just camp out in truck stop areas that whole time. (I was actually surprised that our motorcoach was allowed to drive around on the highways of France, given what they make the truck drivers do.)

The only businesses that seem to be open today were some restaurants, chocolate and pastry shops, and tabac shops, which are like our 7-Eleven stores, only much smaller.

We were on our own for lunch so a few of us went to a cafeteria style place with outdoor seating. I had a rubbery steak with frits. That was not very bonjour at all, as my DePaul colleague Tom Judge would say.

We then toured Hotel-Dieu, which was built in the 15th century as a hospital so it was typical of the hospitals that the church operated in the time of St. Vincent.

On the inside, it felt more like a church than a hospital because of the beautiful high ceilings, religious artifacts, altar and so on. A statue depicting Jesus’s suffering was there to let patients know that he overcame and that they could, too. The altar in the front of the room reminded everyone of the connection between spiritual and physical healing, Father Rybolt said. They put art in the hospital to relieve the pressure of being in the hospital. Most of the art was peaceful, but some of it wouldn’t have calmed me down. See what I mean?

Then in two neat rows on both sides of the length of the massive room were small hospital room dormers. The beds looked so comfortable and inviting. There were walls between the beds and the curtains in the front that could be drawn for privacy. Here’s a photo of Father Rybolt guiding us through the place.

The Hotel-Dieu was a real working hospital run by a religious order of sisters and endowed by the vineyards.

Part of the museum’s holdings included several self-inflicted enema pumps that looked like stainless steel versions of today’s caulk guns. Yikes!

While part of the building serves as a museum today, the rest serves as a retirement home that features a lovely courtyard. I didn’t see anyone sitting out there, but I’m sure they do sometimes.

We were told not to miss the part of the museum that contained an elaborate altarpiece of the Last Judgment by the Flemish artist Roger van der Weyden. It really is very striking. What is shown here is just a part of it.

All this touring sure made us thirsty. So it was nice that we capped it off with some Burgundian wine at Patriarche Pere et Fils, a local wine cellar.





A short time later, we gathered for dinner at Abbaye de Maizieres.




It was all very bonjour!

Getting Organized

CHATILLON-SUR-CHALARONNE, FRANCE (Aug. 14)—After breakfast, we made our way to Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne, which our itinerary describes as “a lovely town with ramparts, a 15th-century, covered market and 11th-century castle ruins.” It was extremely charming. Here's a photo so you can see for yourself.

We went there because St. Vincent was pastor of a Gothic church in the town in 1617.

You may recall from the blog entry about our visit to Folleville, the Gondi family had hired him to tutor the Gondi children there. At this point, St. Vincent was 36 years old. He heard about a church in Chatillon that was seeking a pastor. He accepted the post but didn’t tell the Gondi family anything. “He just left,” said the Rev. John Rybolt, C.M. The reason for the silent and abrupt departure is unclear. Maybe it was because he was extremely close to the Gondis, and it would have been too difficult to actually tell them he was leaving.

Once in Chatillon, he served as pastor at the church for five months—which is not a long time, but it’s huge in terms of the impact his work had on the mission. There, he made some significant decisions that formed him: he decided that charity work is fine, but it was not well organized. As a result, he established explicit directions relating to the care of poor, sick people in their homes. One of the rules, for example, was that when the sisters went to the home of a sick person to prepare a meal for them, they were to first meticulously spread out a white tablecloth on to the table in order to present the meal in an appetizing and dignified way to make the meal more enjoyable for the individual. St. Vincent must have felt that would help feed the spirit of the sick person as well.

Watch the video to take a tour of the church.




Hearing the white tablecloth story really had a profound impact on many of us in the group. So much so that later in the week when Father Rybolt asked each of us to share our thoughts on the trip with the whole group, DePaul University colleague Martin Williams said that we should all spread out the white tablecloth in every aspect of the work we do at DePaul. That’s really a great way of looking at it.

Because Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne is where St. Vincent developed his idea of organizing charity, the town “is really, really important” in the history of St. Vincent, said Father Rybolt. The other two most important places in terms of his development were the church in Folleville (the town we visited on Aug. 8) and his birthplace (which we visited on Aug. 11).

In addition to the church, we went to a place nearby where St. Vincent lived. Nuns live there now. There, we toured the building and visited a chapel that contained a copy of the rules he established for the mission and a painting of him with babies. The painting, even more so than the statue of St. Vincent with babies that I mentioned in a previous blog entry, begat all the other depictions of him with babies and children, according to Father Rybolt. Here’s a picture of the painting.

After a long walk around the scenic town, we had a leisurely lunch at Hotel du Commerce. It was a long lunch because service here is much slower than back home in the states. Still, it was nice to relax for a few hours. The main course was chicken covered in a white sauce and potatoes, and the food was delicious, except for a cold jellied-ham thing they served as an appetizer (see picture)—yet, it did not look appetizing to most of us.


LYON, FRANCE (Aug. 14)—After lunch, we returned to Lyon for a tour of the old city and La Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourviere. Father Rybolt said the church looked like an elephant on its back with all four legs up in the air. It was a pretty extravagant-looking church. The church had no connection to St. Vincent, so I snapped a few pictures and started to daydream about what kind of shopping I would do in Lyon because we had the rest of the day to do with as we pleased. I did only a little shopping, because the stores closed at 7 p.m., which only gave us about an hour and a half. We were all feeling pretty fatigued at that point. The rain that began at around closing time made us feel even more tired. I had a light dinner and made it an early night.

Taking Care of Business

Aug. 13—As you’d expect the Rev. John Rybolt, C.M., likes to tell our group stories about the history of the mission while we’re on the motorcoach going from one place to another. I’m not a big history buff, but I find his stories riveting—even the history lessons. In the world of historians and researchers, Father Rybolt is a rarity in that he brings history to life.

So I just had to share the following account by Father Rybolt that gives us a look at St. Vincent the businessman:

St. Vincent was an opportunist—in a good sense. He saw opportunities to help the mission, and he took advantage of them.

St. Vincent was responsible for not only running his life, but he had to run the Congregation of the Mission (which is what the C.M. stands for behind Vincentian priests’ names, in case you didn’t know). “Our guys” didn’t get salaries, said Father Rybolt. The priests who worked for the seminaries received an income from the bishop. But St. Vincent also was responsible for the Daughters of Charity (DOC), and the sisters of the DOC did collect salaries. “They seem like kindly woman, but no money, no mission,” Father Rybolt said half-jokingly.

So in addition to being a great religious man, St. Vincent was a very good businessman, according to Father Rybolt. St. Vincent received a hefty endowment (I think it was something like the equivalent of $2 million by today’s standards) in a combination of a place to live at St. Lazare (the Vincentians’ first home, which I wrote about in my Paris Aug. 9 blog entry), an endowment that was partly invested and some cash.

The mission needed generous endowments to make it possible to do its much-needed work in the community—taking care of the elderly, orphans and so on. Realizing this, a lot of people began to endow the missions that they wanted St. Vincent to do, Father Rybolt said.

Back then, St. Lazare was supported in land and the produce of land, especially the grain or whatever else they had, such as farm animals, according to Father Rybolt. Fruits of the land would be sold, and that would be the source of money for a great many people. So St. Vincent, like farmers at the time, had to do such things as invest in farm equipment and look out for the safety of workers so that no one was hurt. He also had managers who would go out and oversee the farms.

Not only was there income from the land, but there also were other forms of income. The old St. Lazare also owned a lot of property in Paris—whole streets actually. So another source of income was rent paid by tenants in apartments owned on St. Lazare property. In some cases, if people didn’t have money to give to the mission, they would give the church the rights to something. So the congregation could derive income from tolls, for example. Some people would give the church rights to certain lands so that people would have to pay for the right to fish in a certain area, etc.

Interestingly, St. Vincent, at one point, possessed the rights to coach lines. It’s funny to think that “we have this grandfatherly figure running a coach line,” said Father Rybolt. Even though the congregation couldn’t claim 100 percent of the income from it (it had to be shared with other churches and groups), the coach lines were nevertheless big business for the Vincentians, who also are known as Lazarists.

So on top of everything else, St. Vincent had the tough job of making sure that the mission was supported by some sort of income and that the sources of income were stable.

Getting stable income was the hard part, because the mission also relied on income sources given by the king, such as income from the issuance of municipal bonds on the city of Paris. Problem was what “the king gives, he can take back, so they went from having something to nothing occasionally,” Father Rybolt said.

That made it hard for St. Vincent to budget realistically, but he still managed. “He was at the apex of this financial network,” Father Rybolt said. “Compare that this image of a man who helped poor people. He helped them by being a good businessman.”

Note to self: Check out Monsieur Vincent, the movie. Father Rybolt has referred to it several times on this trip.

One Fine Day

CARCASSONNE, FRANCE (Aug. 13)—Funny that after going on and on about breakfast in yesterday’s blog entry, I missed it today because I woke up at 7 and we needed to roll exactly at 8! So no coffee, no nothing. I had my “breakfast” on the bus. It was M&Ms and peanuts that I picked out of a trail mix that a friend in the group gave me. I also had a Malo ball of chocolate that covered a round marshmallow perched on top of a cookie. I washed that down with some warm leftover Coca-Cola light from yesterday. As much as I needed the extra hour of sleep, I don’t plan to miss real breakfast again.

Turns out today is the birthday of the Rev. John Rybolt, C.M. We sang “Happy Birthday” to him on the bus.

Father Rybolt is so knowledgeable about Vincentian and French history. He tells great stories. Many of them are funny because of the way he describes things. For examples, see the video of him in the Aug. 7 blog entry about relics and the Aug. 12 entry about boiling Saint Thomas Aquinas’s body in red wine to get rid of the flesh and get down to the bones. He’s so matter of fact about everything.

Since we are on the bus right now, I asked a few other people for their examples of funny things that Father Rybolt has said during this trip. Lorne Henne suggests I write: “We’re told Father Rybolt turned 69 today, but we have no documentation.” I laughed because that is totally something that Father Rybolt would say.

We spent a lot of time on this motorcoach today. Hours and hours. It was nice of Father Rybolt and the Rev. Edward Udovic, C.M., our tour guides, to break up the drive today in segments. We detoured from the main road to visit Pont du Gard, the spectacular ancient Roman aqueduct. The Pont du Gard is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

There’s really no connection to St. Vincent, said Father Rybolt. So why did we visit? It was on our route, and it’s an extraordinary example of quality Roman engineering. The Romans knew you needed to have water if you were going to have a city, he said.

A big group of us went all the way to the top, but we didn’t get to walk across from one side to the other. Travel tip: while you are still on ground level and before you climb all those stairs, make sure you purchase a ticket that allows you to walk across. You won't be able to purchase it once you get up there. Still, I was happy that we got to see it, and I think I managed to take some amazing pictures of it. I’ve posted one, so you can see for yourself how breathtaking it is:

We continued on to the town of Avignon. “Protected by its ramparts, the historic core of the city is a lively center for art and culture,” according to our itinerary. “For 68 years in the 14th century, it was the residence first of the seven French popes and then of three others once Pope Gregory XXI had returned to Rome.”

After a break for lunch, we had a recorded tour in English, of course, of the massive fortress-like Palace of the Popes. “The interior, with its generously proportioned halls, rooms, and passages, is an impressive sight in spite of the loss of furniture and decoration.”

It was impressive in that I can now brag that I’ve been to the Palace of the Popes, which is an awesome structure. But the tour was brutal, because the place is so huge.

At some point today, we caught our last glimpse of the Pyrenees through our bus windows. We also got a brief look at the Mediterranean Sea. Father Rybolt also noted that we would be passing the Tropic of Cancer.

We just pulled up in front of our hotel in Lyon. After we check in, we’re meeting up for dinner. I’m sure it’ll be another fine meal.