The Ladies of Charity USA are still going strong at 150. As their upcoming national assembly theme proudly proclaims, they are “Honoring the Past, Celebrating the Present, Embracing the Future.”
The Ladies of Charity of the United States of America will hold its 2007 National Assembly this month in St. Louis, birthplace of the U.S. branch of the Vincentian association of Catholic laywomen that spreads the Word of Christ through service to the poor.
A member of the International Association of the Charities of St. Vincent de Paul, the Ladies of Charity was founded by St. Vincent de Paul in France in 1617. It predated its fellow Vincentian groups, the Congregation of the Mission, founded in 1625, and the Daughters of Charity, founded in 1633, and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, founded in 1833.
In the United States, the Ladies of Charity was founded in 1857 at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Soulard. That parish is still home to an active Ladies of Charity group.
There are 16,000 members of the Ladies of Charity in the United States, and more than 250,000 members in 53 countries.
Thanks to Joe deBenedictis who spotted the inaccurate date of the founding of the Society of of St. Vincent dePaul in the original article in the St. Louis paper. The Society was founded on April 23, 1833 some 200 years later.