Society of Saint Vincent de Paul
international charity organization of lay Catholics
The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (SVP or SVdP or SSVP) is an international voluntary organization in the Catholic Church, founded in 1833 for the sanctification of its members by personal service of the poor. Started by Frédéric Ozanam and Emmanuel-Joseph Bailly de Surcy and named after Vincent de Paul, the organization is part of the global Vincentian Family of Catholic organizations.
Innumerable Catholic parishes have established "conferences", most of which affiliate with a diocesan council. Among its varied efforts to offer material help to the poor or needy, the Society also has thrift stores or "op shops" which sell donated goods at a low price and raise money for the poor. There are a great variety of outreach programs sponsored by the local conferences and councils, addressing local needs for social services.
History
France
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was founded in 1833 to help impoverished people living in the slums of Paris, France. The primary figure behind the Society's founding was Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, a French lawyer, author, and professor in the Sorbonne. Frédéric collaborated with Emmanuel Bailly, editor of the Tribune Catholique, in reviving a student organization which had been suspended during the revolutionary activity of July 1830. Ozanam was 20 years old when he founded the Society.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Society of Saint Vincent de Paul” is international charity organization of lay Catholics. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Society, Saint and Vincent, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1528836. VIAF identifies the subject as 149590175. The Library of Congress control number is n80001257. 2 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 5 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1833 and 1830.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Society of Saint Vincent de Paul” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.