TRIEST, PETER JOSEPH

Founder of four religious congregations; b. Brussels, Belgium, Aug. 31, 1760; d. Ghent, June 24, 1836. Triest, the ninth of 14 children, entered Louvain University (1780), then went to the seminary at Malines and was ordained (1789). As a seminarian he was noted for his devotion to the Sacred Heart and great compassion for the needy and sick. Soon after ordination Triest courageously ministered to those stricken in a typhoid epidemic and continued pastoral work during the French occupation, notwithstanding constant danger. In 1803, while a curate at Lovendegem, he founded the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary (Ghent) to teach, and to care for orphans, the aged, and the infirm. In 1807 he founded the Brothers of charity with similar aims. To nurse the sick at home

he instituted the Brothers of St. John of God (1823). He founded also the Sisters of the Holy Childhood for the care and education of foundlings (1835). As a member of the Almshouses' Committee, he came to know intimately the miseries of Belgium's poor and sick after the French Revolution. For three decades he was so much the inspiration of the charitable works in Ghent and throughout the country that he was popularly known as the St. Vincent de Paul of Belgium; on three occasions he received from the king the highest civil decorations.

Bibliography: P. J. Triest 1760–1960: A Brief Biography, by a Sister and a Brother of Charity (Ghent 1960). canon loontjens, Ontstaan en Spiritualiteit van de Religieuze Stichtingen van Kan. Triest (Ghent 1961).

[l. c. de beuckelaer]