The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, popularly called the SVdP, is an international, fraternal, charitable organization of lay persons, who, in a spirit of love, justice and charity, reach out to people, (irrespective of caste, creed or community) suffering on account of poverty of temporal wants, distress and loneliness.
The Society was founded in 1833 in Paris, by a young college student, barely 20 years of age, named Frederic Ozanam, along with a few of his friends, and named it after St Vincent de Paul, whom he tried to emulate, and therefore, in all humility made him the patron saint of this organization. |