6. A focus on professionalism in care.

When we noted at the outset that both Vincent and Father Triest developed a new style of charity, we must certainly add here that one of the most specific characteristics of this new style was indeed the emphasis on professionalism in care.  Both were pioneers in transforming charity into providing expert care, and in viewing this as a logical consequence of charity.  When one cares for someone, one wants to care for them in the best possible way—that is, in a professional manner.

When founding his first charitable societies, Vincent immediately established clear rules that members were required to follow, which also outlined each person’s responsibilities.  Vincent saw no contradiction whatsoever between providing concrete assistance to the poor and doing so in a structured manner.  In his view, charity must also be well-organized in order to provide the poor with a more sustainable form of support, without, however, getting lost in the structures.  Personal contact with the poor and the sick must never be compromised by the structure.  Perhaps the founding of the Daughters of Charity came about because Vincent felt that the “Ladies of Charity,” as the members of the charitable associations were called, treated the poor and the sick too distantly.  Yet he had provided very clear guidelines in the rules on how they should properly interact with the poor and the sick.  For the Daughters of Charity, he therefore provided, during the period of their novitiate formation—which he called their “seminary training”—not only spiritual formation but also more professional training, so that we may say that Vincent was the first to initiate training in nursing.  It is therefore fitting that Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of professional nursing, later apprenticed herself to the Daughters of Charity in Paris before launching her own nursing training program in England.

When we speak of professionalism, we must view this more broadly than merely the expert delivery of care.  Here, we must also emphasize the importance of structuring and developing clear job descriptions.  From 1632 onward, Vincent would operate primarily from the priory of Saint Lazare in Paris, from which a wide range of activities would be developed.  It was there that he organized his weekly Tuesday conferences for the priests of Paris and became increasingly involved in the political life of France, thereby stimulating greater attention to many forgotten and marginalized groups within the society.  To both the Congregation of the Mission—which soon came to be called the Lazarists, referring to Saint Lazare, from where they operated with their founder—and to the Daughters of Charity, Vincent provided clear constitutions, incorporating guarantees that they would be able to continue fulfilling their original objectives.  Thus, the Daughters of Charity would renew their vows every year, to prevent an overly structured monastic life from hindering their mission to the poor and sick.  After all, Vincent had learned from Francis of Sales how his Sisters, the Visitation Sisters—originally founded to care for the sick and poor in their homes—were compelled by ecclesiastical authorities to adopt a cloistered life and ultimately became yet another contemplative community.  His description of the way of life of his Daughters of Charity became very well known: “As a convent, the homes of the sick; as a cell, a rented room; as a chapel, the parish church; as cloisters, the streets of the city; as a convent, obedience, for they go nowhere but to the sick and to those places where their service calls them.”  With this, Vincent had launched a completely new form of religious life, which would later be taken as an example by many groups.

We also find the same concern in Father Triest to channel charity into expert care.  And this concern is expressed in the attention he devotes to the training of his staff, the attention to proper accommodations where the sick and poor must be cared for, and an appropriate organizational structure.

As for training, we know that he sent Brothers and Sisters abroad to become qualified in, among other things, the education of the deaf.  Sending religious abroad for further training was certainly not a given at the time, but it was indicative of his focus on providing expert guidance to this new target group, whom he sought to pull out of marginalization through appropriate training.  Truly groundbreaking, of course, is the way in which he transformed the care of the mentally ill—who, as already noted, had until then been regarded as dangerous possessed individuals—into genuine care for them, viewing them as sick people who therefore needed to be treated.  That was the basis for the commitment of a young physician, Joseph Guislain.  When Guislain began his work as a physician, Father Triest wrote to the magistrates of Ghent to request that more doctors be made available.  “Since both institutions for the unfortunate mentally ill have been so improved, thanks to your never-ending care and diligence, that the patients are recovering thanks to the necessary medicines, I would like to ask you to appoint a physician in each house who can visit the confined mentally ill daily and use the means of medicine to improve the patients’ condition.”

The care of the facilities is a theme that we regularly find in the correspondence that Father Triest conducts with both the authorities and his Brothers and Sisters.  When he began as director of the Bijloke Hospital, he found the facility to be in very poor condition and sought ways to make the buildings more liveable .  He also did everything in his power to ensure that the mentally ill, who were still residing in the dark cellars of the Gerard de Devilcastle in Ghent, could obtain alternative housing, and eventually they were able to move to the vacant Alexian Convent.  In 1829, together with Dr. Guislain, he drew up a set of regulations describing the various aspects of proper care, with ample attention given to cleanliness and order.  “The administrators shall ensure the utmost cleanliness and the strictest discipline throughout the entire institution, and in doing so shall demonstrate prudence.  … Early in the morning, the supervisors shall ensure that sufficient fresh air enters the patients’ quarters through the opening of doors and windows and that air-purifying agents are used with care.”

Father Triest knew something about organization. He is a man who truly regards administration as a service, one through which the poor and the sick can be better served. He is considered the most active administrator of the Commission of Hospices, consistently putting forward concrete proposals and regularly reporting on what has been accomplished with those proposals.  As early as 1808, he proposed the first set of regulations for the care of the needy elderly, for whom the brothers were responsible—regulations that provided very clear guidelines on how to properly care for the elderly.  And the rules he established for his Congregations also attest to a great talent for organization and a strong commitment to everyday life.  Any form of theorizing was completely foreign to him.

Brother René Stockman,
Brother of Charity