J. Patrick Murphy

Last January J. Patrick Murphy, CM presented me with a pre-publication copy of a little book he had just completed － "Mr. Vincent" － which you can download here. He wrote "My purpose here is to show in a few pages how much Vincent accomplished and how much we can...

Why bother about a man who lived 400 years ago? Why are so many people all over the world on fire with passion to follow in his footsteps? As we approach another celebration of the feast of St. Vincent it seems fitting to look at these two questions raised in J....

“Am I ready to be mentored?” Or am I too comfortable in my present stage of growth?

Even Vincent regretted things he had written! Much ink has been spilled over whether Vincent was really captured by pirates as a young man. There was a period in his life that we know little about… and St. Vincent adamantly did not wish anyone to know about it. At...

Take care of your people; celebrate small successes.

J. Patrick Murphy reminds us in his booklet Mr. Vincent of the collaboration of two exceptional people - Vincent and Louise. In Louise de Marillac Vincent found the perfect partner to build his business model and bring about change that shocked the world. Louise, like...

J. Patrick Murphy, CM writes of Mr. Vincent that he had a feisty temper, was a good mimic, could tell a good story, and was charming to women. He proposes the following Lesson "Know your gifts, strengths and limits - then leverage them." On March 28, 1659, a year and...

In the world of institutional ministries such as hospitals and educational institutions, I often hear the maxim “No margin, no mission.” It express a tension faced by many ministries trying to navigate the realities of the business world, often described as "the real...

Vincent did so much by doing the next right thing. J. Patrick Murphy writes in Mr. Vincent... Historians describe the climate during Vincent's lifetime as the little ice age. Half the crops failed; starvation was rampant; the number of poor increased exponentially....