Watching Scorsese's "Silence", besides indignation and weariness I felt a sense of déjà vu

Watching Scorsese's "Silence", besides indignation and weariness I felt a sense of déjà vu. The film reminded me of a story that at school is usually recalled in the last days of September.

There is a Catholic figure, Saint Vincent de Paul, whom some guides stubbornly call Vincent-Paul. I think not only I but many seminarians have caught unsophisticated guides out on this mistake. In principle, to finish a seminary and not know this name is odd, to say the least, for Vincent, one might say, created the seminary in its modern form.

What he was canonised for I do not remember, so I call him simply a figure, not a saint.

Vincent has an exceedingly interesting biography. At twenty-five he was seized by pirates and taken to Tunis, where he was sold at the slave market. He passed from one master to another several times, until he came to a former Christian who had embraced Islam. Vincent brought this Frenchman back to the faith of Christ, and they escaped together. On his return to France Vincent received the post of parish priest.

But these are not all his feats. Far more interesting is that not everyone agrees with this version of the future saint's African wanderings. There are serious grounds to suppose that these adventures are an invention, and that in reality Vincent, burdened by heavy debts, served as a ship's chaplain and spent several years sailing with the crew of a vessel.

The rest of the holy father's biography tells of his impoverished childhood and a life devoted to helping the poor, the struggle against the plague, and so on. Incidentally, a film about all this was made in 1947: "Monsieur Vincent".

PS I was surprised to learn that a book about Vincent de Paul was published in Russian under the editorship of Alexy II