January 21, 2025
Students returning to St. John’s University for the spring semester will notice a new presence of a familiar campus face on the southeastern side of the new St. Vincent Health Sciences Center.
A statue of St. Vincent de Paul, the founder of the Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentians)—with a historical connection to the former Staten Island, NY, campus and an even richer link to local health care—now looms large in a reflective space that bridges the academic and residential portions of the bucolic Queens, NY, campus.
The St. Vincent de Paul statue, cast in France during the late 1800s, was gifted to St. John’s University by the Sisters of Charity after standing for decades in front of St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center in the West Brighton section of Staten Island. The original St. Vincent’s Hospital opened in 1903 as a 74-bed facility under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York (1903–99). St. Vincent’s Medical Center closed in 2006 and is now the Richmond University Medical Center. Beginning in 2007, the statue stood adjacent to Loretto Memorial Library at the main entrance, proclaiming the University’s Catholic and Vincentian identity to all who entered the campus.
“The closure of the Staten Island campus and the opening of the new St. Vincent Health Sciences Center in Queens provided a fortuitous opportunity to relocate a powerful image of the universal patron of charity,” reflected Rev. Aidan R. Rooney, C.M., M.Div., M.Th. ’78NDC, Executive Vice President for Mission and a graduate of the Staten Island campus.
The new statue is just one of several overt and covert Vincentian images embedded in the latest campus building. When the old St. Vincent Hall was razed to make way for the opening of the $106-million facility marking another milestone in the University’s commitment to fostering service, innovation, and academic excellence, a link to its past was unearthed.
Embedded in the cornerstone of the original St. Vincent Hall, which initially served as the residence of Vincentians living on campus, was a small metal time capsule that, when opened, revealed the single presence of a Miraculous Medal.
The Miraculous Medal is a devotional religious medal created in the 1830s; the design originated from St. Catherine Labouré, a French member of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul and a Marian visionary. She is believed to have relayed a request from the Blessed Virgin Mary to create the Miraculous Medal, now worn by millions worldwide. St. Catherine Labouré spent the rest of her life caring for the aged and infirm.
Both a Miraculous Medal and a St. Vincent de Paul medal are embedded in the concrete foundations of the St. Vincent Health Sciences Center.
The global practice of embedding Miraculous Medals on land and buildings owned and operated by the Vincentians has persisted for almost two centuries. Fr. Rooney explained, “It is a way of asking Mary’s intercession for the success and the safety of all who will live, learn, and serve in these special places.”
The newly placed statue depicts St. Vincent de Paul in a position of protection and concern as he carries an infant with another child at his side. Taking care of abandoned children and orphans was a significant work of the Ladies of Charity and then of the Daughters of Charity, the group of sisters which he cofounded with St. Louise de Marillac.
Like others found throughout campus, the statue offers a visible reminder of how the Vincentian community and its followers serve the vulnerable with care and compassion and the mission of a Vincentian university.