St. Vincent de Paul of Cincinnati

Whoever does the will of my Father is my brother and sister... (Matthew, 12:50)

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SVDP) is an international Catholic organization of lay persons, founded in 1833 by Blessed Frederic Ozaman and his companions. Placed under the patronage of St. Vincent de Paul, the Society derives its inspiration from his thinking and his charitable works. It seeks, in a spirit of justice and charity and by person-to person involvement, to help those who are suffering regardless of creed, opinion, color, caste, and origin. Vincentians gather in groups called "Conferences" that are linked together by District, Diocesan, National, and International Councils. The St. Vivian Conference was founded over thirty years ago (September, 1970) by a group of St. Vivianites including present conference members Gene Neltner and Joe Sailer. Our Conference has full time members, who attend all of the meetings and spend many hours in serving the Society, and associate members, who participate in one or two activities but do not have time for more extensive involvement in the Society. We welcome both men and women, young adults to seniors, to join the conference as full time or associate members. We especially encourage newly retired people to join as full time members.

Our primary goal is to serve people within the territory of St. Vivian Parish, regardless of whether or not they are parishioners, although we also participate extensively in regional SVDP activities outside our parish bounds. In order, we will discuss (1) services we perform within our parish bounds, (2) our unique involvement in regional activities, and (3) how we obtain the resources to perform these services.

Special Case Temporal Help. Although we do not have the resources to act as a welfare or social agency, we do have as a goal to help certain people get through unexpected crises caused, for example, by a sudden work layoff, family problems, or even a delayed welfare or disability check. We interview the people involved and then often help them with rent bills, utility bills or food items. In some instances, we find that these people have no furniture or beds, so we also help with these items. Where appropriate, we give some of these families gift certificates, food, and other items at Christmas and other times during the year.

Hospital Ministry. Although hospital visitation is the responsibility of our pastor and deacons, we try to send get well notes to all St. Vivian parishioners who are in the hospital, and we visit them when it Is appropriate. Every other month, we conduct bingo sessions for the disabled and chronically ill patients at Drake Hospital.

Miscellaneous Parish Activities. We maintain the St. Vivian Magazine rack, selecting, purchasing and subsidizing the cost of the materials; we sit with the elderly and handicapped of the parish to allow family members time to get outside the home; we participate in Daly Parke Communion Services; we participate in handling the donut and coffee socials after Mass on Sundays; and we give rides for people who are without means of transportation to Church and, in emergencies, to other locations. With regard to the latter, we desperately need somebody to take charge of this service for the parish.

Disaster Relief The District SVDP works jointly with the Red Cross in the Cincinnati tristate area to supply aid (clothes, cleaning materials, bedding, cots, food, furniture, and physical help) to victims of disaster. One of our Conference members, Tom Wess, is the SVDP Regional Director for this effort. Two of the members of the St. Vivian Conference won awards for their extraordinary effort in helping flood victims following the recent floods along the Ohio River.

Prison Ministry. A group from our Conference, headed by Bob Barbara, visit and counsel prisoners in the Hamilton County Jail. They also participate in the prison's Sunday spiritual services, supply books and magazines to the prisoners, and donate reading glasses to the prison for the inmates' use.

Temporal Help for the Needy. Our Conference supplies eye glasses, canned goods, clothing, furniture, bicycles, toys, household appliances, etc. to the SVDP Center on Bank Street, where these items are distributed to the poor in the Cincinnati area. Some of our members do volunteer work at the Bank Street Center.

The Bob Rahe Mattress Fund. When one of our beloved Conference members, Bob Rahe, died, so much money was donated to the St. Vivian SVDP Conference in his behalf that a special fund was established in his name. The fund is used for purchasing beds (mattresses, box springs, and a frame) for the needy. We have a continued effort to expand this fund. Our goal is to keep the needy in Cincinnati off the floor and onto a bed.

We gratefully acknowledge all of you members of St. Vivian Parish for your generous contributions to the St. Vivian SVDP, because you supply most of the resources for our work. Cash contributions come to us via the fifth Sunday collections for SVDP, special contributions from individual parishioners during the course of the year, memorials for departed friends and relatives, and bequeaths from departed members of the parish. Non-perishable food items are obtained via the Thanksgiving Day Mass contributions and from shoppers at the Finneytown Kroger Grocery Store. We are greatly indebted to Krogers for the sponsorship of this program. We obtain clothes, furniture, bicycles, toys and household appliances from parishioners on "Bundle Sundays" which are held in April and October. Parishioners drop off books and eyeglasses in special boxes near the Confessional of the Church throughout the year. Money for the bookrack is supplied in part by readers of the magazines and in part by the general St. Vivian SVDP funds.

I would like to close this summary with a real live story in the day of a Vincentian. It was 5:00 p.m. when I received a telephone call from our Conference treasurer, Ed Petch. A woman had called the rectory from the rental office of her apartment to ask our help. She said she would be evicted from her apartment if she didn't pay her rent by 5:00 p.m. the next day. Since the rental office was closed by then, we couldn't check on her story. Furthermore, the woman didn't have a personal telephone, so we couldn't set up an appointment to interview her. I had already interviewed three "clients" that week, and I had a full schedule of appointments the next day, so I really didn't want to be bothered. But Ed called the rental office the first thing in the morning to confirm the story, and we stood at the door of this woman's apartment at 9:00 a.m. The door opened to our knock, and there stood a young women with two pre-school aged children. She gestured for Ed and me to sit down on two folding chairs, the only seats she had in the apartment. She had moved into the apartment only the month before. Her disability check had been returned to the government undelivered, because she had given the government the wrong zip code. She had to pay the rent the next day and had available only enough money to pay part of the rent. We knew from previous experiences that this apartment complex could not give delinquent renters an extension. After we completed our interview, Ed wrote out a check to the rental agency for the remainder of the rent. We also offered her canned food to get her by until her check arrived, and she accepted. As we were leaving, she thanked us profusely. Then she said, sobbing, "I prayed all night that God would somehow help me keep my apartment, and then this morning two of his angels appeared at my door. You are indeed angels of the Lord!" Well, Ed and I felt pretty good being called angels, and it wasn't, in fact, the first time we had been called angels by our "clients". But the more I thought about it, the more I decided we weren't really angels. Angels are powerful, highly gifted messengers of God. The people we serve are members of the family of Christ. We are not their angels; we are their brothers and sisters!

Wake-Up Call to Family Values