St. Vincent de Paul council fosters charity’s deep purpose

12/11/2003 Ed Langlois (Portland Catholic Sentinel)

Mention St. Vincent de Paul, and most Oregon Catholics think of the volunteers who operate the parish food bank or the thrift stores in Portland and several other Oregon towns.

But behind the emergency services, donation pick-up vans and the second-hand sales stands a volunteer governing body. It wrestles with budgets, sets policy and aims to foster the charity’s deep Catholic spiritual purpose.

The Portland District Council of St. Vincent de Paul is made up of a 20-member board of directors plus the presidents of the 54 parish-based groups called conferences. The always prayerful, sometimes testy, assembly guides one of the region’s largest charitable organizations.

“The council gels the conferences together,” says Jim Houle, who leads St. Vincent de Paul at Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Lake Oswego. “That’s where we go with our ideas and needs. We also go there with our problems.”

For full story visit http://www.sentinel.org/articles/2003-50/12142.html