Vincentian Fathers

Congregation of the Mission

Abbreviation	CM, Vincentians, Lazarists
Motto	Evangelizare pauperibus misit me
Formation	1625
Key people	Saint Vincent de Paul — founder
Website	[5]

Congregation of the Mission (Congregatio Missionis; abbreviated as "C.M." in the Roman Catholic Church) is a vowed Roman Catholic society of apostolic life of priests and brothers founded by St. Vincent de Paul. It is associated with the Vincentian Family, a loose federation of organizations who claim St. Vincent de Paul as their founder or Patron. They are popularly known as Vincentians, or Paules, Lazarites, Lazarists and Lazarians.

The Congregation has its origin in the successful mission to the common people conducted by Saint Vincent de Paul and five other priests on the estates of the Gondi family. More immediately it dates from 1624, when the little community acquired a permanent settlement in the Collège des Bons Enfants in Paris. Archiepiscopal recognition was obtained in 1626. By a papal bull — on January 12, 1633 — the society was constituted a congregation, with St. Vincent de Paul as its head. About the same time the canons regular of St. Victor handed over to the congregation the priory of St. Lazarus (formerly a lazar-house) in Paris, whence the name of Lazarites or Lazarists.

Within a few years they had acquired another house in Paris and set up other establishments throughout France; missions were also sent to Italy (1638), Tunis (1643), Algiers and Ireland (1646), Madagascar (1648), Poland (1651) and Turkey (1783). A fresh bull of Alexander VII in April 1655 further confirmed the society; this was followed by a brief in September of the same year, regulating its constitution. The rules then adopted, which were framed on the model of those of the Jesuits, were published at Paris in 1668 under the title Regulae seu constitutiones communes congregationis missionis. The special objects contemplated were the religious instruction of the poor, the training of the clergy and foreign missions.

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