In 1946, Jacques Delarue published L’idéal missionnaire du prêtre d’après Saint Vincent de Paul (Paris: Librairie Vincentienne et Missionnaire).  Father Joseph Lilly, C.M. translated it into English as The Missionary Ideal of the Priesthood according to Saint Vincent de Paul in 1950 for personal use.  It remained in typescript.  It was edited, though the editor is not known, and then made available in mimeographed form to the members of the Congregation of the Mission in 1989 (according to the dating of the library at De Paul University).  The present version follows the 1950 typescript with editorial changes, limited to grammar, punctuation, style and clarity of meaning.

Jacques Delarue insisted that the only way to properly understand Vincent’s thoughts on the priesthood was to place them in their proper historical context, namely the renewal of the church in France known as the Catholic Counter-Reformation, guided by the response of the Council of Trent to the Reformation.  As is well known, political considerations delayed the implementation of the Council of Trent in France for fifty years, at which time St. Vincent was already a priest for perhaps fifteen years.