Persecution: what has happened to a Vietnamese priest

[mdgspencer]

After growing up with no mass after the priest in his village was tortured and killed by the local communist authorities, he decided to become a priest. After that for years he played cat and mouse with the authorities as he served the Catholics in Vietnam. Because he would not keep quiet, his superiors sent him out of the country where he recounts his experiences now.
see www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/the-desperate-plight-of-catholics-in-vietnam-one-priests-story/

 

[catharina]

After growing up with no mass after the priest in his village was tortured and killed by the local communist authorities, he decided to become a priest. After that for years he played cat and mouse with the authorities as he served the Catholics in Vietnam. Because he would not keep quiet, his superiors sent him out of the country where he recounts his experiences now.
see www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/the-desperate-plight-of-catholics-in-vietnam-one-priests-story/

Thank you for the link.

 

[JimG]

There is a Vietnamese priest in our diocese who has a similar story. His seminary in Vietnam was shut down when the Communists took over the country. Over the next few years, his family encouraged him to try to escape the country. He tried, twice. His first attempt failed, and he landed in a prison camp. His second attempt, remarkably, succeeded. He had a brother who is a priest in California, but he was accepted as a seminarian in Kansas. Now he serves a multilingual parish here, saying Masses in English, Latin, and Vietnamese.

On occasion he has gone back to Vietnam to visit his family, and is always harassed as a priest. He has to take money for bribes, and is forbidden to say Mass. Police follow him everywhere. He was prohibited from saying a Mass for his father’s funeral in Vietnam. Yet he is a happy man and shows no bitterness.

I suspect that there are many stories like this. In my own view, this is the fruit of the U.S. abandonment of Vietnam to the Communists. I pray that some day the country and the Faithful there will be free.