New deacons during their ordination at Son Loc Cathedral in Hung Hoa Diocese on Feb. 14. (Photo: giaophanhunghoa.org)
Feb 18 2023
The ordination of 16 new deacons in a Vietnamese diocese will ease its burden of not having enough priests to work among Hmong ethnic people in its far-flung villages, say Church workers.
Bishop Dominic Hoang Minh Tien of Hung Hoa Diocese in Vietnam’s Northwest ordained 16 transitional deacons for the diocese on Feb. 14. Three of them are ethnic Hmong people.
“We hope some of them will be assigned to serve the growing number of Hmong Catholics in our remote areas and to share the pastoral burden with us,” said Father Nguyen Ngoc Ngoan, who works with the diocesan Ministry Committee for the Laity.
Father Ngoan said most Hmong Catholics are in three mountainous provinces of Dien Bien, Lai Chau and Son La.
In the last few decades, Christian numbers have increased in the region of mostly ethnic Hmong people, but the mission suffers from a lack of residential priests, Father Ngoan said.
The three provinces had a few hundred Catholics two decades ago but currently have some 16,000, mostly Hmong, served by some 20 priests, Father Ngoan said. Some 500 adults became Catholics last year, he added.
The three provinces are home to 600,000 Hmong villagers, according to government statistics.
Father Ngoan, who came to work in Dien Bien province in 2016, said he and three other priests “are overloaded with giving pastoral care to 3,000 Catholics, two-thirds of them are Hmong.”
Local people live in at least 12 communities some 30-120 kilometers away from each other connected only by muddy and winding paths, he said.
“We need at least 20 more priests to work in the area. It is best to have resident priests in local parishes and sub-parishes,” the 50-year-old priest said.
He said resident priests re-evangelize Catholics who abandoned their faith, hold dialogues with local government authorities to collaborate in social welfare projects, and create awareness among ethnic villagers about early marriages and drug abuse besides helping them with education and health care.
Hmong Father Joseph Ma A Ca, the diocese’s first ethnic priest, said he hopes the three new ethnic deacons will serve Hmong villagers better as they understand their language, culture and lifestyle.
Father Ca, who serves Dong Heo parish with some 2,000 Hmong people in Yen Bai province, said many local women speak little Vietnamese “and are happy to confess to him in the Hmong language. “
“In the past, other priests could not understand what they confessed and the people also did not understand what penance the priest asked them to do,” Father Ca said.
The priest said he also helps them improve their lives by offering them millions of cinnamon seedlings to plant on their farms. Most of them work on hilly farms, live in poverty, have many children, and have little access to education and health care.
Hmong Dominican Sister Mary Cu Thi Quynh Hoa said she was “delighted that one of the new Hmong deacons is my nephew.”
Sister Hoa from Giang La Pan parish in Yen Bai province said the new ethnic clergymen will also inspire other ethnic young people to follow religious vocations to serve villagers.
Sister Hoa said the diocese now has some 20,000 Hmong Catholics after the first Hmong villagers embraced Catholicism from foreign missionaries a century ago.
Hung Hoa Diocese, established in 1895, has 265,000 Catholics out of a population of seven million people in its area covering nine provinces and part of the capital Hanoi. Catholics belong to 31 ethnic groups, that have different languages and cultures.
Nearly 200 priests work in its 159 parishes and 700 sub-parishes and mission stations. – UCA News
