“Our Service Is Based On Personal Contact With the Suffering”

In the online edition of VincenPaul, the international journal of the Society of S.t VIncent de Paul José Ramón Díaz-Torremocha, International President of the Society , reflects on the significance of personal contact in home visits.Personal Contact

In the present edition, our magazine explores the theme
of “home visits”.Who among us was not surprised, upon
joining the Society, to discover that home visits are the
conferences’ main activity? I think I would not be wrong to
say that we have all been surprised one way or another.
Home visits have gained so much importance within
conferences that we have made them the main activity of
our Society, if not the definition of our vocation.
However, the intent of our founders, our first Brothers,
went much beyond that. In reality, the home visit was
nothing more in the 19th century than the easiest way to
personally meet the poor, in their own environment, not
our own.The main purpose of our activity
is to have personal contact with the
poor in their own environment, not
ours.

At the time when our founders were
inspired to create the Society of Saint
Vincent de Paul, it was the custom for the
poor to go ask for help in locations where
charitable people gathered to protect
them.The young Parisians who founded
the Society wished to go further and,
imitating our Lord who goes to those who
suffer, they seek to share the needs, the
suffering and the abandonment of the poor exactly where
they occur, and not in the often frigid environment of
charitable institutions.They wish to personally bring
courage to the poor where they live: at home.This is
where the term “home visit” comes from.

We must convince ourselves that in our work, what
really counts – especially today when it is particularly
difficult in some parts of the world to maintain the home
visit tradition – is that our service is based on a personal
contact with those who suffer, especially in the
environment where the poor feel more at ease. It is this
specific intent, and none other, that led our founders to
start the tradition of home visits, which we address in this
edition of the VINCENPAUL.

José Ramón Díaz-Torremocha

“The science of charity reform is not transmitted through books and at assemblies’ tribunes as much as by
climbing stairs in the home of the poor, kneeling at his bed, suffering from the same cold as he does, and
discovering the secret of a grief-stricken heart in the course of a friendly conversation. When we have
accomplished this ministry, not for months, but over long years; when we have thus studied the poor at home, at
school, at the hospital, not only in one city but in several, and also in the country, in whatever condition God
placed him, then we can start to know the formidable problem of misery; then we are entitled to propose serious
measures…”
Blessed Frederic Ozanam, 1848