Society of Saint Vincent de Paul

The Vinzenzgemeinschaft (actually: Community of St. Vincent de Paul ) is the association of around 60,000 worldwide Vincent conferences, which together count over a million active members. To form the Vincent Communities in total, the largest voluntary lay organization in the world.

The individual Vinzenz communities are self-contained, guided by the Association 's rights groups with chairman / chairwoman, secretary, treasurer and members. They are located in the respective parishes, and the parish priest counts as a rule as spiritual director, also the Group. The work in the communities Vincent is very diverse and of course highly dependent on the nature of poverty and the needs of the needy. In the communities can basically everyone - regardless of profession, training or denomination - involved, of course, each member works free of charge, so all the funds available exclusively benefit the needy.

Foundation

In 1833, the student and later a professor at the Sorbonne, Frederic Ozanam founded with other students the first Vinzenzgemeinschaft. Reason to do so were the poor social conditions of the workers in the then Paris, the very oppressed him. He pointed with determination on the responsibility of Christians for the poor and weak of this world.

His call for solidarity and the desire to meet the oppressive anguish have found great acclaim in Paris, and soon many groups of like-minded people formed throughout France. 1845 was the first Vinzenz conference in Germany and 1849 in Austria, where now stands at 110 Vincent Communities with more than 1,000 members are active.

Model and patron for all of these groups was the St. Vincent de Paul, who lived 200 years before the founding of the first Vinzenz conference in France. All Vinzenz communities work in the sense of Christian responsibility for the fellows in distress, but also for those who have often lost in her loneliness and abandonment the meaning of life.