Interview with the International President General in El Debate

Juan Manuel Buergo, International President General of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, has been interviewed by El Debate (https://www.eldebate.com/), an online newspaper promoted by the Catholic Association of Propagandists, which is the successor of the historic newspaper of the same name that became one of the major Spanish dailies in the early 20th century.

Álex Navajas, Madrid, June 28, 2025

His was a “late vocation,” as Juan Manuel Buergo joined the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul at the age of 35. And it came after a moment of grief: “I was still single, and I’m an only child. My father, a military man, had passed away. He had been involved in Caritas and in the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. I had seen him going to those meetings since I was a child.” “At one point, I looked up to the sky and thought: ‘Well, I want to go up there when I die.’ But then I looked at my hands and said: ‘Am I going up there with empty hands? What have I done? I’ve done nothing for others!’” he recalls.

Several years later, he became the 17th International President General of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a vast organization of the Church “composed of Catholic laypeople seeking personal and spiritual growth through service to those most in need,” as described in its Annual Report. “We were the Church’s secular arm of charity even before Caritas was born in Germany,” Buergo adds.

When Caritas, now the Church’s other major social organization, was founded in 1897, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul had already been serving the poorest for over 60 years. “We are a civil society organization, and at the time, the Church was not very comfortable with the idea of charity being in the hands of laypeople because we were not under the authority of the bishop,” explains Buergo, referring to the Society founded in Paris in 1833 by Blessed Frédéric Ozanam.

– That is quite novel indeed: an evangelizing initiative of this scale started by a layperson…

– … and it’s still led by laypeople. We have faced challenges throughout history, because the Church has always preferred us to be a private association of the faithful. But the matter has gone through several general assemblies, and we have always preserved the spirit of our founders. They insisted that our headquarters should not be in parishes but in universities, factories, homes, wherever possible. Yet, naturally, they have often been in parishes, since we are all Catholics. It is not a Catholic society, but it is composed of Catholics.

Caritas, on the other hand, depends directly on the bishops and is therefore parish-based.

– Yet it remains one of the largest charitable organizations of the Church.

– Yes, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul is present in 155 countries. Last year, we invested approximately €1.5 billion. But in reality, the impact of social assistance cannot be fully measured, because many actions—such as being present, accompanying people in hospitals or during grief—cannot be quantified in financial terms.

Each country is autonomous within the Society; we are a confederation. The rules and statutes are shared, and our core mission is prayer and action; ultimately, to bring the Gospel to those in need. It is about seeing the face of Christ in the poor, as our founder in Spain, Santiago de Masarnau, used to say. He was a musician, a great one. He often repeated that if we limit ourselves to material aid, the Conferences of Saint Vincent de Paul will disappear. Not in the eyes of humankind, but in the eyes of God. That’s why our primary mission—our ultimate mission—is spiritual assistance. It is challenging, because when you’re immersed in material help, it is easy to become secularized. But this is what we must strive for. I am committed to resisting secularization, to remembering that material help is not the goal—it is only a means. The real goal is spiritual support.

– Don’t you think that many of the Church’s charitable institutions have, in fact, fallen into that secularization, focusing only on material assistance?

– Yes, which is why I don’t like to emphasize numbers. I always say that the greatest social impact cannot be found in figures, but in presence, closeness, and spirituality—which often go unmeasured. We can cite numbers of people: we are around 2.3 million volunteers in the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul worldwide. But indeed, it is easy to fall into secularism when one is focused on daily logistics—distributing food, assisting people. I remember talking to a Vincentian priest one day who told me: “I’ve spent ten years in Mozambique and haven’t evangelized a single person.” You know? Protestants, on the other hand, go into people’s homes with the Bible, and they’re so persistent that they eventually evangelize them. But we are often too reserved… That phrase stuck with me—it made me wonder whether the social actions we undertake stop at that, or if we can go a little further. Maybe say something about God.

Frédéric Ozanam used to say that almsgiving should never be done from a place of superiority. One must ask a family with nothing to pray for you—that is the greatest gift they can offer in return, far beyond the material help you give. That is almsgiving without humiliation.

– You joined the Society following a difficult time: the death of your father.

– Yes, I wanted to help. But charity must always be understood as love for one’s neighbor, especially for those who have the least. That is Christian charity. I knocked on the door of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and was welcomed into a group I truly enjoyed. It was about ten or twelve people from diverse backgrounds: engineers, working-class individuals, shopkeepers. It was a bit of everything, and we had very enriching conversations about God, followed by discussions of the people we were helping. We would go two by two to visit them, and that experience enriched me greatly.

– And here in Spain, what do the volunteers do?

– We work with families, women, people experiencing homelessness, migrants. Also with older persons. We have some programs for children and youth, especially the so-called “key kids”—children who wear their house key around their neck because we don’t know where their parents are, and they come home very late. Sometimes, we stay with them in schools. We also work with people facing addiction. We are involved in the Proyecto Hombre and hospital accompaniment—supporting people who are sick and without resources, assisting at the hospital doors for those who are lost in such large facilities. We are relaunching this effort in hospitals throughout Spain. We also have street accompaniment groups. And we’re even present at the airport, due to the recent issues at Barajas with people without shelter.

Navajas, Á. (2025, June 28). “Many of the Church’s NGOs have fallen into secularization, focusing only on material aid” [Interview with Juan Manuel Buergo]. El Debate. Retrieved from https://www.eldebate.com/religion/20250628/muchas-ong-iglesia-han-caido-secularizacion-limitarse-ayuda-material_310869.html