Vincentian sisters look to laity for help

Declining numbers of vocations have pushed many religious orders into abandoning institutions and organisations they have run for decades or even hundreds of years.

But one order, the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, has come up with what it hopes is a way of preserving both its work and its spirit on into the future.

The sisters have set up a company, The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul Services, and are advertising for a lay director who will take over from their existing head, Sr Ellen Flynn.

“We feel we have developed a great way of serving the poor, and there’s no reason why it need not be lay led,” said Sr Ellen this week. “It will change the ethos a little but there are lots of Vincentian organisations that are lay led, and we feel there is no reason why our work should not continue run by lay people.”

Sr Ellen said her congregation currently ran several successful projects around the country, including a scheme in Manchester to support prisoners’ families, a centre in Glasgow for Romanian Roma, and a project for people with learning difficulties. The ambition behind setting up the company was that these projects would be safeguarded in the future, at a time when the youngest sister in the order was in her fifties.

The sisters also hope the company would continue to provide responses to poverty in the future, and that it would allow a Vincentian voice on the issues the order cared about to be heard in the future.

Meanwhile, another religious order has announced that it is to pull out of running two of its care homes. The Institute of Our Lady of Mercy said this week that it had decided to withdraw from ownership of the Convent of Mercy Nursing Home in Colwyn Bay and proposes closing St Joseph’s Care Home in Brighton.