Diocese of
Orange, Archdiocese of Hanoi
become 'sisters'
Archbishop Joseph
Kiet Ngo of Vietnam visits
Catholic counterparts in Orange
County.
By My-Thuan
Tran, Los Angeles Times Staff
Writer
August 24, 2008
The first
time that Archbishop Joseph
Kiet Ngo of Hanoi visited
Orange County, he was struck
by the energy and passion
the Vietnamese community had
brought to the Roman
Catholic Church in the
United States. He met dozens
of Vietnamese American
priests, attended Vietnamese
Masses and talked to
parishioners.
"I admire Vietnamese
Catholics here," said Ngo,
the archbishop of the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of
Hanoi. "They live their
faith more actively than in
Vietnam."
From that
visit, Ngo came up with an idea
to create a partnership between
the archdiocese in Vietnam and
the Diocese of Orange.
He wanted Catholics in Vietnam
to learn from their American
counterparts.
This week, Ngo is making his
first church-sanctioned trip to
Orange County to kick off the
"sister diocese" relationship.
Under the partnership, the
Diocese of Orange for the first
time will sponsor four
seminarians from Vietnam in
their training to become
priests. The diocese will also
send priests to Hanoi to teach
English and at seminaries.
"We are now
linked to people who share our
faith but who live in another
country," said Bishop Tod Brown
of the Diocese of Orange.
"The experience will be
beneficial not just to our
Catholic Vietnamese community
but with the broader community
as well."
Ngo's visit carries spiritual
and political significance in
Orange County's Little Saigon,
where anger still runs deep
toward the government of the
country that many fled decades
ago. It links Hanoi, the capital
of Vietnam that was once
isolated from the world, to the
largest population of Vietnamese
outside of the country.
While many Vietnamese Americans
still harbor resentment toward
the Communist government, their
religion has tied them to
Catholic churches in Vietnam,
said Father Tuan Pham of the
Diocese of Orange.
Many Vietnamese American
Catholics have donated to
Vietnamese churches over the
years, and dozens of priests
from Vietnam have come to Little
Saigon in the last 10 years,
though not with the church's
official blessing, Pham said.
The Catholic community in Little
Saigon has grown quickly since
Vietnamese refugees started
arriving after the fall of
Saigon in 1975. Starting from a
single Vietnamese Mass, there
are now 14 Orange County
parishes that host 53 Vietnamese
Masses each week. Of the 181
diocesan priests in Orange
County, 43 are Vietnamese.
Since Ngo arrived Tuesday, he
has been huddled with diocese
officials hammering out details
for the sister partnership, but
he did take a one-day break for
a visit to Disneyland with Pham.
Ngo's big public events with the
Vietnamese American community
come this week, when he will
participate in Vietnamese
Masses.
Ngo will also ask for donations
to help rebuild churches
destroyed during the Vietnam
War. He will be sent off with a
celebration at Santa Ana's
Vietnamese Catholic Center on
Sunday.
In the United States, about
one-third of Vietnamese are
Catholic. In Vietnam, Catholics
make up about 7% of the
population, which is
predominantly Buddhist.
At the end of the Vietnam War,
the Communist government imposed
tight restrictions on the
Catholic Church, but those have
loosened in recent years, Ngo
said. The government allows
priests to be ordained every
year instead of every six years,
as was the rule in the 1980s.
Even so, Ngo said, parishes in
Vietnam have had difficulty
establishing schools and
hospitals.
"Vietnamese people in America
have education, they have jobs,
they have a better way of life.
It is easier for them to live
out their faith," Ngo said. "In
Vietnam, they are more limited
to what they have in terms of
finance, and that can make them
less open minded in terms of
practicing our faith."
Ngo said he admires the fact
that the United States is a
secular society that is also
very faithful. Ngo said that as
Vietnam develops and changes, he
has seen young people leave
rural villages to find work in
bigger cities, only to face
challenges keeping their faith.
"As Vietnam develops, it is hard
to balance that with making
money and having a job in the
city and being away from your
family and still having your
religion grounded," Ngo said.
"We are a rural country and
traditional society that is
changing quickly. We don't have
experience of living faith in
the modern country."
Ngo said he hopes the
seminarians from Hanoi will
learn this during their stay in
America to bring back to
Vietnam.
Ngo, born in the northern city
of Lang Son, encountered his own
difficulties while on the path
to becoming a priest in Vietnam.
Ngo's family feared persecution
from the Communists and fled
south in 1954, part of an exodus
of Catholics and other Northern
Vietnamese to a part of the
country that was perceived to be
more tolerant. At the urging of
his parents, Ngo entered the
seminary when he was 12.
He was three years away from
becoming ordained when the South
Vietnamese government collapsed
in 1975 and the Communist
government would not allow new
clergy to be ordained.
Ngo recalls the diocese bishop
saying, "You will never be an
ordained priest."
Many classmates decided to leave
the seminary, but Ngo did not
give up. "I accepted that," he
said. "I thought, I would like
to consecrate my life to God and
God could make use of me as he
likes."
He worked as a beekeeper and
tended goats while doing
pastoral work for his parish.
After the breakup of the Soviet
Union, Vietnam's policy became
more open, and Ngo was finally
ordained in 1991. He became
bishop of Lang Son diocese in
1999 and archbishop of Hanoi in
2005.
After the Diocese of Orange
established its partnership with
Hanoi, other dioceses in the
United States followed. The
Diocese of Los Angeles and the
archdiocese of Saigon, for
instance, are now sister
dioceses.
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