Francisco Javier Fernández Chento

Francisco Javier Fernández Chento

Javier is a lay Vincentian from Spain, associate of the Congregation of the Mission, member of the Popular Missions team of the Congregation of the Mission canonical province of Zaragoza (Spain) for 30 years, a Vincentian ministry dedicated to evangelization and service to the impoverished, following the missionary style we inherited from St. Vincent de Paul. In addition to much of the Spanish geography, he has participated in missions in Honduras, Bolivia, the United States, El Salvador, etc.

He is a graduate of the Oberta University of Catalonia, in four disciplines (Assistant Management, Administrative Management, Human Resources and Risk Prevention, and Advanced Accounting). He is bilingual Spanish/English.

He manages and maintains several Christian and Vincentian web pages, including “The Vincentian Formation Network” (“We Are Vincentians”), which he founded in 2007 along with Fr. Mitxel Olabuénaga, C.M., as an online platform to offer Vincentian formation to all members of the Vincentian Family in the world. Currently articles are published in six languages.

He also collaborates with the Vincentian Family Office (whose offices are in Philadelphia, USA), as a consultant on formation topics. He has been — and will continue this task — coordinator of the Spanish area at .famvin.

He is also a Catholic singer and songwriter, and has published several albums. In 1997 he founded, along with a friend, Alfredo Arambillet (recently deceased), the label Trovador, a well-known Christian record company in Spain.

He collaborates closely with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Spain, for which he has translated and edited several books, including one by its International President, Renato Lima de Oliveira. He is a scholar of Frederic Ozanam, a lay Vincentian who lived in 19th century in France, and one of the most vivid examples of how to concretize the Vincentian charism in our day, from the secular state. Javier is the Spanish-language editor of Frederic’s work, which began with Fr. Jaime Corera, CM, in 2010 and is still ongoing: he is still working on the edition of Ozanam’s complete correspondence which, published in four volumes, will complete its publication in late 2017. In addition, he is preparing for September 2017 a new edition of a biography of Frederic Ozanam, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his beatification.

Javier has been president and member of several non-profit associations, including Feyda, a Vincentian association founded in Spain. For most of his life he has worked in the Third (non-profit) Sector.

He currently works in Information Technology, offering consulting and hosting services, Web design and maintenance, as well as advice, training and IT solutions, document management and digitization of texts, editing, layout and publication of books, etc.