Vietnam Catholics attend a Eucharist adoration at the unfinished church in Ban Lenh Subparish in March. (Photo: supplied)
By Peter Nguyen
Apr 17 2023
In the early 1980s, we suffered a severe famine in Hai Phong, a major port city in northeastern Vietnam, and had to move to the mountainous province of Yen Bai to look for food.
At first, we had to steal tea leaves from state-run tea plantations to sell for food and later made bamboo baskets for a living.
We toiled tirelessly for material life and did our faith practice quietly as parishes in the area had no resident priests from 1964, when local priests were forced to leave them, to 2003, when Father Michael Le Van Hong was assigned to them.
Religious activities in districts of Tram Tau and Van Chan which are home to Hmong people were heavily restricted by the local government, which considered the area as one without religion.
Many Hmong people were banned from converting to Catholicism while others were forced to recant their faith and not gather for prayers at their homes.
In 2010, Son Thinh commune officials pushed the altar down while Father Joseph Can Xuan Bang from Nghia Lo Parish was celebrating a Mass at the house of Hmong Mary Ly Thi Nu.
We demanded them to re-erect the altar, pick up flowers, candles and chalices, and apologize to us for their desecration. Consequently, they did.
We started to struggle to demand they respect our religious practices by recognizing our Ban Lenh sub-parish and allowing priests to provide pastoral activities for us.
The sub-parish with 120 members was approved in 2011 and later priests from other places paid pastoral visits to them at Nu’s 30-square-meter house, where people had to attend Mass from outside.
Nu in her 80s, who was detained for gathering people for prayers but stayed absolutely true to her Catholic faith, used her house as a chapel for the community for over a decade. Her shining example in bearing witness to the Good News inspires us to manage to build a proper chapel to satisfy local people’s increasing religious needs.
We petitioned local government officials to grant land to build a chapel many times but they refused, saying that there was no land for religious activities.
So we bought a plot of land and started to build a chapel on it in 2021 without government building permits.
Local officials have accused the sub-parish of erecting the chapel without their permits and ordered it to stop the construction ten times but they did not give a fine.
Local people stopped the construction for some time because of their order and then resumed it.
As a result, the 300-square-meter chapel has a tin roof and tiled floor but has not had doors and has not been furnished yet as we do not have enough money. We still need 150 million dong (US$6,380) to complete it.
Two priests from Nghia Lo Parish have celebrated Mass three days a week in the uncompleted chapel since last year.
The chapel also serves as a meeting point between local ethnic villagers and many groups of youths, college students, and benefactors from other places, who often visit them, provide humanitarian aid for them, hold leisure activities for children, and make generous donations to the sub-parish’s development.
The sub-parish now has 180 members, most of them are Hmong villagers and the rest are from other ethnic groups.
Churches in the mountainous areas serve as proper places for local people who lack mass entertainment, to worship, learn the catechism, take part in pastoral and social activities, and relax after work.
The local church has also put up four other “illegal” chapels for Hmong Catholics in other sub-parishes in recent years. Those facilities based in districts of Van Chan and Tram Tau with some 40,000 Hmong villages cost 500 million dong (US$21,000) including the cost of land, each serving 50-150 people.
The effective way of building church facilities is that at first some people buy land and donate their ownership to the local church after the buildings are completed.
Local people have no choice but to erect worship places without government permits to do faith practice since they will never get building permits from government officials if they follow their asking-granting mechanism.
We are fully aware that religion is a basic right, not a gift given by someone.
Religious followers train to work for the common good so government officials should treat them fairly and create favorable conditions for them to live out their faith. – UCA News
