A huge crowd of Catholics attended the Mass concelebrated by a group of U.S. and Vietnamese Bishops and priests on the first day of the Lunar Year. It was the first time in decades that Hue Catholics could join foreign clergy in celebrating Lunar New Year.
The Phu Cam cathedral of Hue was packed with tens of thousands of Catholics when the said group of U.S. Bishops celebrating Mass on Monday evening – the first day in the Year of the Ox. Traditionally speaking, for Vietnamese Catholics, the first day of the Lunar New Year (commonly known as Tet) is the Thanksgiving Day. It is the time to give thanks for many graces of God during the last year, also the time to pay respect to their ancestors, and express gratitude to their living parents and grandparents. In turns, children would receive blessings from the elders. Young children would receive a red envelop with cash called "li xi”, meaning "lucky money".
Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco led the American delegation, including three bishops from California dioceses (Bishops Todd Brown of Orange, Dan Walsh of Santa Rosa, and Ignatius Chung Wang, a San Francisco auxiliary).
The American prelates concelebrated Mass with Hue's Archbishop Stephen Nguyen Nhu The and hundreds of Vietnamese priests. At the end of the Mass, children and even adults received from bishops and priests red envelops not with cash but with Bible Verse Greeting Cards.
A day earlier, the American prelates concelebrated Mass commemorating the return of St. Paul on the eve of Lunar New Year with bishop Joseph Chau Ngoc Tri and priests from diocese of Danang (80km south of Hue).
Like Hanoi, the archdiocese of Hue has struggled through a difficult year, clashing with the Communist regime repeatedly over the ownership of properties that were seized by the government from Church ownership.
Among the most intense conflicts is at Our Lady of La Vang Shrine, the major and most frequently visited religious Catholic shrine in Viet Nam. All of 23.66 hectares of land surrounding the basilica has been seized by the government since 1975.
In last April, Nguyen Duc Chinh, deputy chairman of the People's Committee of Quang Tri, during a meeting with Archbishop Stephen Nguyen Nhu The and Bishop Francis Le Van Hong, coadjutor bishop, made an official announcement that 21.18 hectares (out of a total of 23.66 hectares originally expropriated) around the basilica would be returned to the Church soon.
However, to this date, his promise remains unfulfilled.
An Bang parish is another case. The parish is located 25 km Southeast of Hue city with about 800 active Catholics living and fishing in the area. In the middle of nowhere, on the land once owned by Mr. Le Khinh, a parishioner who donated his property to his parish upon his death, a makeshift church was built. But parishioners in this congregation are so impoverished that their newly erected church has not even a single chair. Church goers often struggle with rain or hot sun since there is no roof, no wall, nothing.
Their poverty, however, does not appeal to the pity of the government nor can it spare them from attacks of officials who are so driven by greed and ambition that they have been trying to take every step to dissociate the people with their legitimate need for a decent worshiping place where they can be in communion with Christ. They have turned down each and every request to build a "real church" from the priest and his parishioners while publicly announcing they had already made plans to seize the land and turn the area into a tourist resort.
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| Mass on the eve of Lunar New Year |
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| U.S. Bishops and Bishop Chau Ngoc Tri of Danang |
The Phu Cam cathedral of Hue was packed with tens of thousands of Catholics when the said group of U.S. Bishops celebrating Mass on Monday evening – the first day in the Year of the Ox. Traditionally speaking, for Vietnamese Catholics, the first day of the Lunar New Year (commonly known as Tet) is the Thanksgiving Day. It is the time to give thanks for many graces of God during the last year, also the time to pay respect to their ancestors, and express gratitude to their living parents and grandparents. In turns, children would receive blessings from the elders. Young children would receive a red envelop with cash called "li xi”, meaning "lucky money".
Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco led the American delegation, including three bishops from California dioceses (Bishops Todd Brown of Orange, Dan Walsh of Santa Rosa, and Ignatius Chung Wang, a San Francisco auxiliary).
The American prelates concelebrated Mass with Hue's Archbishop Stephen Nguyen Nhu The and hundreds of Vietnamese priests. At the end of the Mass, children and even adults received from bishops and priests red envelops not with cash but with Bible Verse Greeting Cards.
A day earlier, the American prelates concelebrated Mass commemorating the return of St. Paul on the eve of Lunar New Year with bishop Joseph Chau Ngoc Tri and priests from diocese of Danang (80km south of Hue).
Like Hanoi, the archdiocese of Hue has struggled through a difficult year, clashing with the Communist regime repeatedly over the ownership of properties that were seized by the government from Church ownership.
Among the most intense conflicts is at Our Lady of La Vang Shrine, the major and most frequently visited religious Catholic shrine in Viet Nam. All of 23.66 hectares of land surrounding the basilica has been seized by the government since 1975.
In last April, Nguyen Duc Chinh, deputy chairman of the People's Committee of Quang Tri, during a meeting with Archbishop Stephen Nguyen Nhu The and Bishop Francis Le Van Hong, coadjutor bishop, made an official announcement that 21.18 hectares (out of a total of 23.66 hectares originally expropriated) around the basilica would be returned to the Church soon.
However, to this date, his promise remains unfulfilled.
An Bang parish is another case. The parish is located 25 km Southeast of Hue city with about 800 active Catholics living and fishing in the area. In the middle of nowhere, on the land once owned by Mr. Le Khinh, a parishioner who donated his property to his parish upon his death, a makeshift church was built. But parishioners in this congregation are so impoverished that their newly erected church has not even a single chair. Church goers often struggle with rain or hot sun since there is no roof, no wall, nothing.
Their poverty, however, does not appeal to the pity of the government nor can it spare them from attacks of officials who are so driven by greed and ambition that they have been trying to take every step to dissociate the people with their legitimate need for a decent worshiping place where they can be in communion with Christ. They have turned down each and every request to build a "real church" from the priest and his parishioners while publicly announcing they had already made plans to seize the land and turn the area into a tourist resort.