Society of St Vincent de Paul

Bathgate

Annual Activities Report Jan – Dec 2007 

Our members meeting every week at 6.30pm on Mondays in the Parish Hall .

There are 6 members , four Brothers and two Sisters , each meeting lasts about 50 minutes . They are active as Readers, Eucharistic Ministers , Pass keepers  and Sacristans .Weekly visits are made to the sick in hospitals and nursing homes and also regular home visits , these include  St. John’s Hospital  and various other  Care and Nursing homes .

All calls for assistance to the parish house and to our public S.S.V.P. telephone line are answered , a mobile telephone is used for this purpose. The number is advertised weekly in the parish newsletter .

The Edinburgh Archdiocese of the S.S.V.P. owns a number of caravans based at Port Seton Caravan Park and also one at Petticur Bay in Fife .  these are used to provide families with short holidays at the caravan parks , this year we were able to send five families on holiday ,The families are taken to and from the sites and given some pocket money . All costs relating to their transport etc. are met by the conference.  We are most grateful to Acredale Community Centre for the use of their mini-bus and their volunteers who assist us when taking families to these caravan sites . Our costs for this project this year were about £600.00 .

The conference sponsors two twinned conferences of the S.S.V.P. in Kerala State, in South India and also sponsors Technical and Vocational apprenticeships in the same area , we donate £445.00 annually for this purpose, these apprenticeships help young Indian men and women find suitable work to earn money to support their families .The Catholic Christians of Kerala have a number of parishes which are twinned with Saint Vincent de Paul conferences throughout Scotland, they are sometimes known as the St .Thomas Christians  The tomb of  the Apostle is in the city of Madras .Our Bro’s in Kerala sometimes write to us about their work . 

The National Office of the S.S.V.P supply us with S.S.V.P. Mass cards for all families who have a bereavement in the parish. The conference pays a stipend to the Parish Priest for each bereavement .

On the 7^th January 2008 , the members arranged a Requiem Mass for all the families who suffered a bereavement in 2007, about 150 parishioners attended this service  During the Mass the representatives of the bereaved families received a pot plant and a commemorative calendar , and a candle was lit and placed on the altar. This year forty two of our parishioners died,  May the Lord grant them Eternal rest .

During the Christmas period , about thirty one families received grants of money . approximately £1500.00 was distributed . We received Christmas gift bags and money from the students at St Kentigerns Academy which we gave to deserving  families . Also during this period  , we often receive other donations of money from local groups and individuals .     

All the children  attending the Easter Masses , both pre-school and primary school received  an Easter egg , these were distributed by our Parish priest Mgr. A Lawson at the end of each mass , Any surplus eggs were taken to the Children's Ward at St. John's Hospital Livingston . The Easter eggs were donated to the conference by one of our parishioners .

There is a 26 seat weekly Mass bus operated by McKechnie Coaches  which runs to all areas of the parish  for the two Sunday masses at 9.00am and 10.30am , all costs connected with this project are met by the Society  . Currently about 40  parishioners use this service every week. The cost of this service annually is  £2,500.00 , the success of this project can be measured by the reliability of the service and the able assistance of Mr.Peter McKechnie . 

The children of Primary three at St Mary’s Primary School collected groceries at their Harvest Festival in December and donated these groceries to the Society , the groceries were given to a homeless unit caring for young people in the district .

Donations of baby clothes and baby equipment such as prams and cots etc. are taken to Glasgow and given to the Cardinal Winning Pro – Life organisation at the Parish of Holy Cross at  Dixon Avenue  Glasgow .

The Society is most grateful to all who have contributed to our funds in any way , to them we are most grateful .

Joe Milligan

For the Society of St Vincent de Paul Bathgate

   A Brief History of the S.S.V.P

The Society is named after Saint Vincent de Paul who was born in south-west France in 1581. He was Canonised in 1737 by Pope Clement XII

and made Patron of the Society in 1855 .

 In 1833 the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul came into being, founded by 20 year old Fredric Ozanam a student at the Sorbonne University in Paris with half a dozen other young students. All from comfortable backgrounds, their task, to help people suffering from the most grinding poverty in post revolutionary France. Each was given responsibility for a very poor family which had to be visited every week to try to help them with their problems, to give service and friendship, their time and their talents. Before he died at the age of 40, the Society had spread to Western Europe, Greece, Turkey, U.SA Mexico and Canada. Blessed Fredric Ozanam was Beatified by His Holiness Pope John Paul II in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 1995 

 The Saint Vincent de Paul Society now has a presence in 132 countries throughout the world. There are approximately 47,000 conferences. (groups of members) 322 of these groups are in Scotland .There are in excess of 600,000 members world wide .

The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul is therefore a world-wide charitable organisation, the largest Lay Catholic Charitable organisation in existence.

 The Scottish Society sponsors conferences in various parts of the world, for instance there are over 5000 conferences in India with 45000 members, also in India there are 11 homes for old people, 4 hospitals, 3 dairy farms and 3 training centres. The Bathgate conference sponsors two conferences in Kerala State in South India, we also sponsor technical apprenticeships in the same area, we pay for their training over a 3-year period.

 The first meeting of any conference of the SSVP in Scotland was in Hunters Square in the Parish of St. Patrick’s in the Cowgate in Edinburgh in the year 1845. It had 11 members .

 The Bathgate conference was first formed a little before the First World War around about 1912. One of it’s earliest and youngest members was a teenager called Joseph Logan .He was to become a lifelong member of the Society and served as President of the Conference for a number of years, In 1964 he was awarded the British Empire Medal by Her Majesty The Queen for services to the Community of Bathgate .His son Vincent is now the Bishop of the Diocese of Dunkeld with his Cathedral in Dundee.

 The Society has the right to collect money inside the church, the present conference meets weekly, has six members, four men and two women and is involved in every facet of parish life, Mgr Alistair Lawson our Parish Priest is the Chaplain to the Conference.  In 2002 the Bathgate Newlands Committee awarded the John Hunter Memorial Medal to the conference for services to the community of Bathgate