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
At a small Hanoi cemetery, Catholic farmer Nguyen Van Thao opens a fridge and pulls out a bag of bloody fetuses to prepare for burial — a grim reminder that Vietnam has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. Around 40 percent of pregnancies in the country end in abortion, according to a Read more
A young Vietnamese priest has been excommunicated after accusations he taught false beliefs against the Catholic faith. Fr Peter Nguyen Van Tuong was excommunicated “latae sententiae”, the apostolic administrator of Vinh Long diocese announced. Administrator Fr Peter Duong Van Thanh accused Fr Tuong of “preaching false beliefs against the Catholic Church doctrine” and “being too Read more
Vietnam’s Catholic bishops have condemned China’s deployment of a deep sea oil rig in a disputed area of the South China Sea. “This situation can pose a high risk for a military conflict,” Archbishop Paul Bui Van Doc, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam, said in a letter on behalf of the bishops. Read more
Anton Ngoc Thanh, a Vietnamese Redemptorist priest, has been listed in as one of 100 information heroes by Reporters Without Borders. Fr Thanh has worked for Vietnam Redemptorist News since the 1990s and has often had problems with authorities in the communist-run nation. Last year, he was arrested during a demonstration in support of an Read more
An appeals court in Hanoi, Vietnam, has upheld the sentence of a jailed Catholic lawyer, who is on a hunger strike to get access to Communion and Confession. The People’s Supreme Court upheld the jail term of 30 months for lawyer and dissident Joseph Le Quoc Quan for charges of tax evasion. His firm was Read more
Thousands of Vietnamese Catholics took part in vigils in the cities of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, and Vinh on Sunday to protest the continued imprisonment of Le Quoc Quan, a Catholic lawyer. AsiaNews reported that Le Quoc Quan, a member of the Commission for Justice and Peace of the Vietnamese bishops’ conference, has been harassed Read more
AUCKLAND — Twenty-three years ago the life of Vietnamese Community chaplain, Fr Andrew Nguyen, was transformed. On June 6, 1990, Fr Nguyen arrived in New Zealand to a life of peace and freedom, after a life of war, repression, imprisonment and torture. Speaking of that day in 1990, he told NZ Catholic: “I was very Read more
Representatives of the Holy See and the Vietnamese government will soon begin a fourth round of meetings devoted to the establishment of diplomatic relations. In a brief statement, Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Holy See Press Office, expressed hope in the two days of meetings, which begin on June 13 at the Vatican. Read more
The state of religious freedom around the world is “increasingly dire”, according to the chairperson of a United States agency that monitors threats to this human right. The reasons include the rise of violent religious extremism and the actions and inactions of governments, according to Dr Katrina Lantos Swett of the US Commission for International Read more