The Vincentian Conferences. Salta, late 19th century, early 20th century

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the women’s conferences of San Vicente de Paul in the city of Salta in the period between the last quarter of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th. We are interested, above all, in giving an account of their origins and composition, addressing the foundations and principles that drove their social work and outlining some of their main charitable works. We start from the hypothesis that the programme of activities deployed by this lay associative experience contributed to the renewal, adjustment and reconfiguration of the mechanisms and instruments through which Catholicism sought to respond to the new demands and needs of the so-called “suffering humanity” and of the most impoverished social groups in a context marked, among other factors, by the institutional reorganisation of the Church in a Roman key and the challenges and problems posed by the emerging social question.