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.