ANALYSIS: The faith of local Catholic religious is frequently enriched by formational periods in other countries, providing them with a Christian outlook that is both cosmopolitan and humble.
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of three articles from Vietnam: Read Part 1 here.
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — While traveling in Vietnam for three weeks, immersing myself in Catholic communities and sacred spaces, I met many impressive young men and women who have dedicated their lives to Christ. ｜JAPANESE｜
So frequently, a day’s highpoint included exchanges in English or French with a young priest or member of a religious order. A pattern emerged as I chatted with these young religious in Vietnam: Most had significant experience in other Asian countries.
These pilgrims had lived within the universal Church, as a world with fewer barriers than the secular reality of borders and national tensions. As a result, their Christian outlook is both cosmopolitan and humble.
Could this fluidity between Catholic communities in Asia be a source of regional integration? Are emerging Catholic leaders serving as a force for harmony across extraordinarily diverse cultures?
Education and Mission
Examples support the point, including Brother Peter Nguyen Viet Bao, age 32, who took final vows with the Marist Brothers last year.
Brother Peter grew up in a Catholic family living in a poor region of central Vietnam. Missionaries came to his parish in 2009, and he decided to join them a year later, at age 18, because “I was impressed by their spirit.”
As part of his formation, Brother Peter spent two years in the Philippines, two years in Sri Lanka, then back to Philippines for another two years. In Sri Lanka, he was mentored by Archbishop Pierre Nguyên Van Tot, who served in the Vatican Diplomatic Corps and recently retired.
Brother Peter speaks excellent English, perfected in the Philippines. As a result, he is a great fixer/translator for delegations that come to Vietnam, such as a group I traveled with: Japanese humanitarians led by Jesuit Father Ando Isamu, who founded a “Japan-Vietnam” initiative to raise money and support micro-finance programs, scholarships and individuals in need.
Another member of the “Japan-Vietnam” group was Nguyen Thanh An, age 33, a Jesuit in formation (he called himself a “scholastic”) born in a coastal province in southern Vietnam who now lives in Tokyo and expects to be ordained next year.
After three years of study within the Jesuit Vietnam Province, he was sent to Japan in 2018. An describes himself as a “missionary to Japan.” His brother is also a Jesuit priest who spent several years as a missionary in neighboring Laos, where the Catholic population of 100,000 has grown 100% since 2015. Catholics now comprise 1.3% of the Laotian population.
Some observers explained to the Registerthat Vietnam is a poor country, and the Church struggles financially so local vocations often receive scholarships to study abroad. Upon their return to Vietnam, they bring experiences that enrich the life of the local Church.
“Philippines is well known for its majority-Catholic population,” said Brother Peter. “Many Vietnamese religious men and women go there for theology since there are so many Catholic institutions for religious studies.”
In one sense, this movement is a “natural thing,” observed Father John Worthley, a legendary China expert and priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York. “In one country, [like Japan] bishops need priests, and in another [like Vietnam], there are many vocations but not the finance to support them.”
“But fundamentally,” he continued, what’s happening in Asia “is primarily the Holy Spirit guiding the universal Church.”
Supportive Bishops
Besides the Holy Spirit, an explanation lies in the extraordinary unity one finds among the bishops of Asia.
Some 130 bishops from 27 member counties spent close to three weeks with each other two years ago in Bangkok. Under the banner “Journeying Together as Peoples of Asia,” the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) convened its first general assembly in 52 years. Many sessions were devoted to learning more about the diverse realities faced by the Church, from poverty in Pakistan to climate disasters in Myanmar to the newness of faith in Mongolia.
FABC was founded when Pope Paul VI visited Manila, Philippines, in 1970, and 180 Asian bishops came to meet the Holy Father. From the start, the federation dedicated itself to evangelization, which became “New Evangelization” in 2012.
In 2022, FABC called “for the Church in Asia to greater participation, integration and transformation by promoting a culture of encounter” — a commitment one sees clearly in Vietnam.
Evangelization was often mentioned by young priests I met. “Many young Vietnamese priests and women religious are devoting themselves to serving in other countries, especially countries with few vocations,” observed An, the young Jesuit who is doing exactly that. “I think it shows the commitment of the Church to evangelization, an important mission and nature of the Church,” he added.
Since evangelization and regional collaboration are central to the bishops’ federation, it’s natural to find them encouraging cross-fertilization of local Churches.
Father Anton Quan Ganh studied in Korea, where the Catholic Church is well established and influential. About 11% of the Korean people are Catholic faithful, while in the nation’s National Assembly, 27% of representatives currently are Catholic.
While in Korea, Father Ganh joined the Clerical Congregation of Blessed Korean Martyrs, founded in 1953 as the country’s first Indigenous religious order.
“The bishops and priests here in Vietnam have been very welcoming when I came home as a member of this new [for Vietnam] order,” said Father Ganh, adding that the bishop of Bắc Ninh helped incorporate him into the life of the diocese.
Not just priests but lay Catholics benefit from the encouragement of regional exchange.
In Japan, earlier this year, I met groups of Korean pilgrims visiting Catholic sites in Nagasaki despite historical tension between the two countries stemming from the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.
According to Cardinal-elect Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, who spoke to the Register last April, Korean and Japanese bishops explicitly decided to encourage pilgrimages and exchanges as a way to advance harmony between the nations.
Chinese Catholics in Vietnam
But it would be a mistake — and historically superficial — to portray Asian Catholic communities as only recently interacting with each other and moving between countries.
For one thing, the very story of founding Church missionaries such as St. Francis Xavier is an account of cross-cultural transit. The saint traveled in the 16th century to India, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia and died in 1552 on an island off the Chinese mainland.
In Ho Chi Minh City, in a neighborhood known as Cholon, I met an extraordinary Church community and group of priests at St. Francis Xavier Church. It was built in 1900 for the local Chinese Catholic community. To this day, the 5:30 p.m. weekday Mass and two Masses on Sundays are offered in Cantonese.
The church itself is being entirely renovated, so closed for worship (parishioners and priests pay for repairs and renovation, not the state), and a large outdoor pavilion is used for Mass. But Father Vincent Co Dien Thanh brought me into the nave to see a tragic, historic site: the pew where President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic daily communicant, elected in 1955, prayed before being murdered, with his brother, Nhu, on All Souls’ Day in 1963.
Shockingly, books such as The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of President Ngo Dinh Diem(Ignatius Press, 2015) by Catholic military historian Geoffrey Shaw, demonstrate that Diem’s assassination was a macabre upshot of a coup approved by the U.S. government. Diem’s ancestors were among the country’s earliest converts to Catholicism in the 17th century. Before his election, he visited Rome during the Holy Year of 1950 and had an audience with Pope Pius XII.
“Yes, President Diem came to St. Francis Xavier on his last day, as he often did. He was friendly with the French pastor here, Father Gabriel Lajeune,” Father Stephen Huyuh Tru, age 82, told the Register while we sat in his kitchen, just 20 feet from the church. “We have a procession to President Diem’s gravesite each Nov. 2.”
Father Tru grew up in the church’s neighborhood and served as an altar boy there. Ordained in 1974, he still lives on church grounds with his sister.
Father Tru, who is ethnically Chinese, had been a priest at St. Francis Xavier for just a year when South Vietnam fell in 1975 to Ho Chi Minh’s army from the North. “Everything was on fire. Many houses near the church burned but the church was untouched.”
The conquering communist government also closed neighboring Catholic schools and Church newspapers and forbid public processions, but priests continued to say Mass. “It was a very difficult time,” the priest told the Register in French.
“Today, we are thriving: 1,000 people attend Mass each week, although more Vietnamese than Chinese come,” Father Tru reported.
Meanwhile, Father Lajeune fits the Asian transnational Church pattern: He remained in Saigon until 1976, but pressure on him was intense. He moved to Hong Kong, where his ministry continued for over 40 years, until his death in 2018.
- Keywords:
- catholics in vietnam
- church in asia
Victor Gaetan Victor Gaetan is a senior correspondent for the National Catholic Register, focusing on international issues. He also writes for Foreign Affairs magazine, The American Spectator and the Washington Examiner. He contributed to Catholic News Service for several years. The Catholic Press Association of North America has given his articles four first place awards, including Individual Excellence, over the last five years. Gaetan received a license (B.A.) in Ottoman and Byzantine Studies from Sorbonne University in Paris, an M.A. from the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy, and a Ph.D. in Ideology in Literature from Tufts University. His book God’s Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy, and America’s Armageddon was published by Rowman & Littlefield in July 2021. Visit his website at VictorGaetan.org.
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