Biography of P.J. Triest
Peter Joseph Triest was born on the 31 August 1760 in Brussels, the ninth child of a well-to-do family. Due to the excessive interference of the Austrian government in religious matters, he was forced to change schools several times. From the age of 16 onwards he attended the Latin School at Geel. He was lodged with a local family and was deeply struck by the care in families for the mentally ill. In 1780 he left for the Catholic University of Louvain. Two years later he decided to become a priest and entered the seminary at Mechelen, where he was ordained a priest on 10 June 1786.
As a young priest he served at Blaasveld, Our Lady across the Dijle, Asse and Hanswijk, prior to his appointment as parish priest of St. Peter’s parish in Ronse in 1797. At that time, priests were forced to take the oath of fidelity and obedience to the laws of the French Republic. Those who refused had to go into hiding. Father Triest was one of them and for five years he exercised his priestly duties in secret. This was a time of deep spiritual growth for him, nevertheless, his social commitment remained clearly present, as can be seen from his founding a workhouse for orphans in Ronse.
On 15 May 1802 Triest could act in public for the first time. Being of a forgiving nature, he invited all his parishioners to wholeheartedly forgive their enemies. A conflict with the anticlerical mayor of Ronse, Fostier, brought Triest to Lovendegem in 1803, where he was confronted with grinding poverty. In response to these needs, he founded his first Congregation, the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary on 4 November 1803.
In 1805, Father Triest was sent to Ghent to look after incurable persons with the aid of his Sisters. He was appointed a member of the Commission of Hospices with responsibility for organising the care of the poor. Father Triest was strongly motivated by Gospel values, the love of God and a caring social conscience. He spent the next thirty years translating that love of God into practical measures to comfort the poor, the sick and the suffering. In order to provide better care for poor elderly men at the Bijloke he founded a second Congregation on 28 December 1807 called the Hospitaller Brothers of Saint Vincent, and later called the Brothers of Charity.
Triest was a good organiser, a practical man, who knew how to get the support of civil and church authorities. He had also come to a deep inner spiritual maturity, which is reflected in the insight of his spiritual directives to the Sisters and the Brothers. During his entire life Triest brought an innovative approach and a far-seeing vision to his various undertakings.
He also wanted to do something about homecare for the poor and so in 1823 he founded the Brothers of St John of God, who amalgamated with the Brothers of St Jerome in 1946. Meanwhile the Sisters and Brothers of Charity looked after the elderly and incurable persons in hospices, hospitals and psychiatric institutions. They took care of orphans, opened schools for poor working-class children, boarding schools for middle-class children and specialized in the education of deaf and blind children. Together with Dr. Jozef Guislain, Triest became the founder of psychiatric care in Belgium.
The good Mister Triest, as everybody called him in Ghent, pleaded with the Dutch King Willem I for the conservation of the beguinages in Ghent. In 1830 Triest, who up until then had been honorary canon, was appointed titular canon of the Cathedral of St Bavo and also a member of the council of the Bishop.
One year before his death, he founded yet a fourth Congregation, the Sisters of the Childhood of Jesus, to take care of foundlings. He did not live to see the first Sisters receive their clothing or the presentation of their Rule. The 'Belgian Vincent de Paul' died on 24 June 1836 with these words on his lips: "Give and it will be given unto you" (Lk. 6:38).
