Vietnam Archdiocese Hard Pressed To Serve Burgeoning Catholic Population
Jun 14, 2006
Ho Chi Minh City archdiocese needs more priests and churches to serve a growing Catholic population, according to its leader, Cardinal Jean Baptiste Pham Minh Man.
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (UCAN, June 12,2006) -- In describing the situation to UCA News on May 26, the cardinal added that the local Church should also take some responsibility for Vietnamese working elsewhere in the region.
When Cardinal Man began his ministry as archbishop on April 2, 1998, he recalled, the archdiocese had 510,000 Catholics. By 2005 this number rose to 630,000 people, served by 500 priests, or one priest for every 1,260 people. The number of Catholics, however, does not include tens of thousands of migrant Catholics from other provinces.
The Church leader noted that he has ordained 150 priests over an eight-year period, but during the same time almost 100 priests died, retired or became unable to do regular pastoral work due to illness.
A lot of overseas Vietnamese priests serve Vietnamese communities in foreign countries, the cardinal-archbishop acknowledged. In the United States, he noted, 700 Vietnamese priests serve 450,000 Catholics among 1.3 million Vietnamese-Americans. In Australia there are 116 Vietnamese priests serving 42,000 Catholics among 200,000 Vietnamese-Australians.
Cardinal Man said he would not invite those overseas priests to return to Vietnam to provide pastoral activities to local Catholics, since they "are not acquainted with local Catholics' lifestyles, feelings and thoughts or social norms." However, he qualified, overseas Vietnamese priests can be invited to give talks to local clergy, Religious and laity on Church issues and other subjects in which they specialize.
Meanwhile, he said, old churches and many churches that have been built or repaired in recent years do not provide enough seats for Massgoers, who "have to stand outside the doors or even on the pavement."
This past Easter, he recalled, he celebrated the two-hour Easter Vigil at Redemptorist-run Our Lady Of Perpetual Help Church and Massgoers stood throughout the whole celebration so more of them could fit. So, he concluded, many churches still need to be built to serve Catholics in the archdiocese.
The local Church also "does not have enough facilities to admit vocations," the Church leader said, noting that St. Joseph Major Seminary, where 210 seminarians from seven dioceses are studying, has to use its storeroom for student accommodations. This is because the government did not restrict the number of candidates proposed by the dioceses for this school year, he added.
With entering classes of 70 or more students, Cardinal Man said, "How well can seminary formators supervise students' studies?" The government allows the seminary to recruit a new class only every other year.
The government did give permission last December for the seminary in Ho Chi Minh City to open a branch in Long Khanh town. The new facility is expected to be ready in October, according to the cardinal, after which it will recruit seminarians from Ba Ria, Da Lat, Phan Thiet and Xuan Loc dioceses. The city campus will then admit only seminarians from the archdiocese and the neighboring dioceses of My Tho and Phu Cuong.
The cardinal expressed concern for the many Vietnamese workers in the region, especially in Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines. The Catholic Church in Vietnam "should be responsible for providing pastoral care for those people," he said.
He added that he plans to invite Religious congregations working in Vietnam to have their communities in these other places offer pastoral care to Vietnamese workers. "It is best for the congregations to send their members to those countries where they will study local culture, traditions and lifestyles so that they can serve their compatriots," he added.
Cardinal Man explained that it is difficult to send archdiocesan priests to serve in foreign countries.
According to Vietnam's Agency for Foreign Labor Management, during the first three months of this year, 16,921 Vietnamese went abroad to work. Malaysia, which admitted approximately 7,200 workers, South Korea with 4,000 and Taiwan with 2,400 accounted for 80 percent of this total. Laos and Japan were next highest, admitting 680 and 494 workers respectively. During that period, workers each remitted an average of US$300 a month to family members at home.
Vietnam Archdiocese Hard Pressed To Serve Burgeoning Catholic Population