ASIA

A CONTINENT IN NEED OF CHRIST
Duy Khoa Pham
Author: Colin Howell,  6 April 2020

Today most of us Americans know of the many challenges that the Church in China faces, hearing rumors and whispers of the incessant persecution to which the underground Church is now well accustomed. But few of us could speak with much authority on one of China’s southern neighbors: Vietnam.

In fact, beyond knowing that we were in a long, drawn-out and terrible conflict with Vietnam from 1955 until 1975, many of us might even have difficulty pointing out this South Asian country on a globe. And even fewer would likely know that Saigon is now known by the name Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city in Vietnam with approximately 13 million residents in the greater metropolitan area, exceeding that of American cities like Chicago by several million.

The lack of knowledge is actually quite reasonable because after the withdrawal of US troops in 1975, North Vietnam took over the rest of the country and established a unitary socialist government in 1976, politically and economically isolating the country from the rest of the world for ten years. Finally, in 1986 the government instituted a number of economic and political reforms that drove Vietnamese integration into the political and economic global arena. Now Vietnam is consistently ranked among the fastest growing economies in the world and this fact, together with a number of other mitigating factors, makes Vietnam of great interest for all Catholics worldwide.

It is so important because while the country is exploding, it still suffers from crippling corruption and poverty and also lacks substantial infrastructure in many areas. Of the over ninety million members of the indigenous population, only about six million are Catholic: a sizeable minority. But as the country continues to flourish and become a leader of nations on the Indochinese Peninsula, it will become increasingly important that the Catholic Faith play a significant role in the shaping of their modern culture.

This is why young men like Khoa, a seminarian from Ho Chi Minh City, and others like him now receiving formation at our partner institution, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, are in such need of our active support because this nation needs apostles for Christ, well-formed in the Catholic Faith, to go and evangelize their entire nation and sanctify it for the Lord.

Khoa grew up an only child under the care and security of a devout Catholic family. Early on in his childhood, his mother and grandmother suspected that Khoa might have a vocation to the priesthood and decided to consistently pray for God’s will to be made known. Khoa, acutely in tune with the spiritual side of life in childhood, also felt some form of a call and gave himself to prayer on the matter and was still quite young when he arrived at the firm desire to enter the seminary. But his confessor advised him to first study so Khoa set himself to learning while concomitantly preparing for seminary life.

But the death of Khoa’s grandmother affected him so deeply that it threw his discernment for some time into crisis. Thankfully, he turned in his time of trial and inner distress to God in prayer until he received overwhelming clarity that God was in fact calling him to the priesthood, prompting him to surrender his life completely into the hands of God, completing his studies and entering the seminary.

Khoa hopes to become a mission priest and go to the people in the diocese of Bùi Môn, a diocese on the periphery of the city with few priests. The Church currently maintains minimal presence in this region and there are many social and economic tragedies on a daily basis. Khoa’s bishop clearly sees how this young man will grow into a position of leadership and has sent him to Rome to study at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross to receive the advanced formation he will need to live out his apostolate faithfully.

If you agree with us that it is of paramount importance for the future leaders of the Church to receive a solid foundation of formation with an academically rigorous institution that also happens to be unabashedly steeped in prayer and the sacraments, then perhaps you would like to join us in supporting future Church leaders in their critical formative years.

Mostly we need your concrete prayers, for our apostolate and for the apostolates of the entire priesthood for Christ. But we also cannot continue without your financial contribution to ensure that the future leaders of the Church receive the formation they need to become the leaders that God has called them to be. Grace may come from God, but we invite you to join us in the small role God has placed under our care: the formation of the future leaders of the Church by clicking on the donate button at the top of the webpage.