Posts Tagged ‘Vietnam’

Gangsters attack nuns in Hanoi

Thursday, May 10th, 2018
Gangsters attack Hanoi nuns with batons

Gangsters have attacked a group of nuns as they protested against the construction of a house on their former land. The St Paul de Chartres sisters in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, tried to stop workers getting onto the site. Witnesses say gangsters working for the builders beat one nun unconscious. They say building workers had moved Read more

Vietnamese attend Christian rally in their thousands

Thursday, December 14th, 2017

Vietnamese filled a stadium in Hanoi last week for a Christian evangelistic event. The Communist government, which controls religions, gave permission for the rally. Over 10,000 people went to it. U.S. evangelist preacher Reverend Franklin Graham said the government only gave permission for the event in the week leading up to it.

The priest who died on a Vietnam battlefield

Monday, November 20th, 2017

Labor Day, September 4, 1967, in the United States was just like so many other Labor Days before: the last day before the start of school, a federal holiday, banks and stores closed, and people preparing to join friends and family for backyard barbeques. But some 8,000 miles away in South Vietnam it marked the Read more

Gangs terrorising Catholics while cops look away

Thursday, June 22nd, 2017

Gangs of youths are terrorising Catholics in north-east Vietnam and the police are turning a blind eye. Wearing red T-shirts with yellow stars and waving national flags, the gangs have been attacking Catholics and their property since the beginning of June. “The primary motivation behind the incidents is to pressurise local Catholics and the deanery Read more

Catholic environmental activist arrested

Thursday, May 25th, 2017

A Catholic environmental activist has been arrested and his supporters beaten by police in Vietnam. Police attacked protesters who were demanding an explanation for the detention of environmentalist Hoang Duc Binh earlier this month, said a priest at the scene. He said the police told the crowd Binh had been moved to another facility. The Read more

Venerable Cardinal lived heroically virtuous life

Monday, May 8th, 2017

Imprisoned for 13 years by Vietnam’s communist leaders and then exiled until he died in 2002, the Venerable Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan lived a life of heroic virtue Pope Francis has ruled. Francis declared Francois Xavier “Venerable” last Thursday. Francois Xavier’s story of imprisonment, much of which was spent in solitary confinement, has Read more

Toxic waste wipes out fishing in four Vietnam provinces

Friday, July 8th, 2016

Church aid agencies are playing their part to support people in Vietnam whose livelihoods have been devastated by industrial marine pollution. On April 6, dead fish began washing ashore along 200 kilometres of the coastal provinces of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue. Nearly three months later, authorities announced that toxic Read more

Dissident priest released by Vietnam before Obama visit

Tuesday, May 24th, 2016

Just before a visit from President Obama, Vietnam released a political dissident priest who had spent much of the last two decades in jail or house arrest. Catholic Church officials announced that Fr Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly was released from jail on Friday morning, AFP reported. President Obama started a three-day visit to Vietnam on Read more

Former Vietnam boat refugee to lead Aussie diocese

Tuesday, May 10th, 2016

Pope Francis has appointed a former refugee, who fled war-torn Vietnam by boat in 1979, to lead the Australian diocese of Parramatta. Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen, 54, begins his new role after serving as a Conventual Franciscan since 1989 and as auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne since 2011. Parramatta, in western Sydney, is one of Read more

Vietnam 40 years on

Friday, April 24th, 2015

Early one morning in February 1968, when the fighting in central Vietnam had reached a new level of insanity, a group of South Korean soldiers swept into a village called Ha My, a straggly collection of bamboo huts and paddy fields about an hour outside the city of Danang. They were from a unit called Read more