Vietnam authorities deny blocking a Vatican delegation from entering the country.
The Bangkok Post reported on Tuesday that Vietnam had revoked visas for a Vatican delegation working to advance the beatification of former assistant archbishop Francois-Xavier Van Thuan.
“Vietnamese authorities have not received any official request from the Vatican for such work to take place in Vietnam recently,” said Luong Thanh Nghi, spokesman from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The spokesman said that Vietnam was “always ready to create conditions for delegations appointed by the Vatican to officially work under the framework agreement of both parties.”
But the Post reported an official from the archbishop of Hanoi’s office who said “the delegation can’t come because the government of Vietnam withdrew the visas a few days ago.”
Eglises d’Asie, the information agency of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, said it had learned from sources that the beatification plans had “angered” Hanoi, whose ties with the Vatican have long been strained.
Van Thuan, the nephew of Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam’s first president, spent 13 years in detention after the fall of the South. While detained he wrote meditations on his spiritual experience on the back of old calendars.
Freed in 1989 and exiled in Rome, Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal.
Van Thuan died in 2002.
Sources
- Bangkok Post
- Bikamasr
- Image: Bangor to Bobbio