St. Vincent de Paul’s Feast Day is Friday September 27th and the Visitation Order celebrates it especially because of his friendship with St. Francis de Sales.In fact, after St. Francis de Sales entered eternity, St. Vincent became the spiritual director of St. Jane de Chantal, the foundress of the Visitation Order.
St. Vincent de Paul not only performed this great service, but also had a favored role in encouraging the canonization of his friend, St. Francis! He wrote a letter to the Holy Father, Pope Alexander VII, about this hoped-for possibility:
June 6, 1659
Most Holy Father:
I know that the whole of France and many other nations are urgently beseeching Your Holiness to deign to inscribe on the calendar of Saints the name of the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva. I am also aware that Your Holiness, filled with admiration for the rare virtues that shone in him, and the books of lofty devotion which he composed, holds his memory in profound veneration, and, consequently, that Your Holiness seems inclined to carry out this design, without there being any need of petitions from others and, especially, from such a wretched and unknown individual as myself. Nevertheless, Most Holy Father, as I was on rather familiar terms with this servant of God, who often deigned to hold converse with me, either about the Institute of the Religious of the Visitation of Holy Mary, which he established and founded, or on other pious matters, I have admired so many, and so great, virtues in him, that it is hard for me now to keep silence; I cannot be the only person who says nothing.
Faith, Hope, Charity, and the other cardinal and moral Christian virtues seemed almost innate in him and, taken together, formed in him, at least to my way of thinking, such a fund of goodness that, during an illness which occurred to me shortly after a conversation with him, I turned over in my mind his sweetness and exquisite meekness, and often repeated to myself: ‘Oh! how good must God be, since the Bishop of Geneva is so kind.’
If I were alone, Most Holy Father, in thus thinking about him, I might believe I was deceiving myself but, as the whole world shares these sentiments, what else is needed, Most Holy Father, but a word from Your Holiness to consummate such a holy enterprise, by resolving to inscribe his name in the catalogue of the saints, and setting him up for the veneration of the whole world! All the priests of our Congregation and myself prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, now most humbly beg you to do so. May God Almighty deign to grant you many long years for the welfare of His Church!
Most Holy Father, etc., etc.
(<Letters of St. Vincent de Paul>. Burns, Oates, 1937.)