Joseph Dinh Quang Hoan: "In Vietnam there are many young people willing to serve the Church".A representative of the Holy See in Vietnam, a prelude to a similar path with China?David Rolo is a Spanish missionary who belongs to the Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity. A native of Toledo, he has been a missionary for 29 years, since 1995, and a priest for twenty years. He is currently in Vietnam, where he has been since 2019. His work, for the past two years, has consisted in the pastoral care of the international community of the Archdiocese of Saigon, in the south of the country, a task that he carries out together with a priest. Vietnamese.
What was your vocation process like until you became a missionary in Vietnam?
-As a member of a religious community that is eminently missionary, I have been assigned in different places: Mexico, Spain, Italy, for a while in the Philippines and, in shorter missions of three or four months, in Venezuela, Chile, Poland... We, as a religious institution, have a presence in Asia: we are in the Philippines, also in Singapore and Taiwan. We saw the need to expand our communities a little and, after doing a study, we found that Vietnam was a favorable place because, apart from the Philippines, which is an exception in Asia, Vietnam is one of the countries with the highest percentage of Catholics, even though it is very small, only 7 % of the population. But it seemed to us a good platform, and besides, the missionary presence of the Church in Asia is a must, because it is the continent where there are the greatest number of people and where Jesus and the Gospel are least known. Being here is not a whim, but an obligation, if we really call ourselves missionaries. After a process of discernment and after finishing my previous assignment in Rome, I was commissioned to found in Vietnam, and I arrived in January 2019.
In general terms, what is the current situation of the Church in Vietnam?
-The Church in Vietnam is relatively small, and I would like to stress the word "relatively" because, compared to the surrounding countries, it is a significant minority, since in a country of about one hundred million people, the 7 % is seven million.
It is a church marked in its history by persecution and martyrdom. The Church in Vietnam cannot be understood without this history of struggle and survival since the arrival of the first European missionaries, who were mainly French, Portuguese and Spanish. Among other things, it was because the evangelization process did not fit with some very marked cultural lines of the Vietnamese people, and also because of some lack of understanding of the culture at the beginning. That history of persecution lasted until very recently, I think we all have in mind the experience of Cardinal Van Thuan, and you still meet here people of the Church, older now, who have spent time in prison.
That makes Catholics in Vietnam really very proud and very fierce defenders of the legacy passed down to them by previous generations. So, here the concept of being Catholic but not practicing directly does not exist. Although we are talking about a small percentage of the population, the churches are always full, because those 7 million Catholics attend Eucharist regularly, not only on Sundays, but also daily, and they have a feeling of belonging that is really very, very deep-rooted. On the other hand, recently there has been a very nice rapprochement of the Vietnamese government (which has a one-party system: the Communist Party of Vietnam) towards the Catholic Church, after a long time of dialogue between the Vietnamese Bishops' Conference and the government. The pandemic was a very important turning point because of the witness of many faithful of the Church who volunteered to work in hospitals, cared for the sick, distributed food to those in confinement... This witness has been gratefully received by the Vietnamese government and thanks have been given publicly, recognizing the presence of the Church as beneficial for the country and for Vietnamese society. There have also been approaches to the Holy See, which in the end have resulted in the presence of the Vatican representative on Vietnamese territory. Before, Bishop Marek lived in Singapore and only came to Vietnam for a few visits. Now, however, he can have a stable presence in Vietnam, although diplomatic relations still need to move forward. It's a time of quite a lot of understanding, we would say, and steps are being taken little by little in that direction.
What pastoral challenges do you perceive in Vietnam?
-I would divide the pastoral challenges into two large blocks: one is the pastoral care of the Christian in the Church, and the other is the pastoral care of the Church's members. ad genteswith people who are not baptized. Internally, I would say that the greatest challenge is that the Catholic faithful are very pious people, who have, as I mentioned before, a strong sense of belonging to the Church, who attend the celebrations, who collaborate with the Church, but in many cases, there is not a deep spiritual experience and an experience of encounter with God that leads them to a life of relationship with God in their daily life. So, faith is lived in a way based on belief and tradition, but there is little personal experience of deep faith. I believe that this is one of the great challenges: how to provide people with a personal experience of God, not only the Almighty God who is in Heaven, but the God with whom I can relate on a daily basis, who accompanies me, who leads me to times of personal prayer, to deepen my understanding of the Word of God, etc. There is a process to be done, especially because the new generations, as it happens a little bit in all countries, due to globalization, are beginning to feel a little more disaffection towards the Church, and they are looking for something more than just going to Mass.
Obviously, living in a country where the vast majority of citizens are not members of the Church and do not even have a Christian culture is another great challenge. And one thing that is quite surprising is that, although we say, for example, that in Europe we are in a period of new evangelization, because young people already know less and less about God, the truth is that our cultural background is largely marked by Christianity, and therefore many cultural celebrations, such as Christmas, Easter, popular festivals in the villages, we all celebrate them, and more or less young people, even if they are not believers or are not baptized, know what a church, a priest, a nun ... is. Here, those who are not Christians really know absolutely nothing of what Christianity is. It is a very big challenge, which implies a lot of silent witness of life, of being present, at the service of society with charity, volunteering, and continuing to be firm in one's own beliefs in the midst of a Buddhist culture, which is the majority religion, being part of this culture without renouncing one's own identity.
So there are a lot of challenges here, also because it is not always easy because of political situations to do open evangelization without suspicion that you are proselytizing or bringing Western ideas into this culture.
What are the main differences between the Church in Vietnam and the Western Church?
-The Vietnamese church is a one hundred percent Catholic, apostolic and Roman church, so it is a church in which the liturgical celebration itself or the understanding of the Church itself is very similar to the one we have, because the first evangelization came from Europe, as in many other places. Therefore, although it has its peculiarities, they are not so significant. It seems to me that one difference is that the religious environment within the church in Vietnam is what you could have in Europe 50 or 70 years ago. Here we are at a different stage. In Europe, things have been overcome, such as the absolute primacy of the priest, who decides everything, organizes everything in the parish. This experience of synodality here is still in its infancy, because the figure of the priest is very preeminent, and the people are there to help what the priest says, in models that perhaps are no longer ours. Then, there is also a very evident reality which is vocational: here there are still many vocations, and many young people enter the diocesan seminaries. This is an evident difference with the vocational reality in Europe. It is also true that when the external environment, as it is in Europe, is more complicated, vocations are much more personalized and the people who really take the step to consecration or priesthood is because they have a very serious and deep conviction, and they know what they want to do. Here often vocations are still the fruit of family inertia, because Catholic families would love to have a priest or a nun among their members. Sometimes young people opt for the consecrated life not out of personal conviction, but because they have always heard in the family that their parents and grandparents would be very proud, and they want to keep the family happy. On the positive side, there is a difference in numbers, and on the negative side, in how the vocation is lived or personalized.
Another big difference is what I mentioned before: here the churches are always full, it is surprising because of the low percentage compared to the general population, but it is really impressive to see the churches always full, there are even people in the street with loudspeakers and screens to follow the Masses, because they do not fit inside, and there are quite a few churches. Then, there are some differences in the experience of the Liturgy: here the whole Mass is sung. Also, at the beginning of the Eucharist people gather and sing the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Commandments of the Church... This comes from the first evangelization, it was a way for the missionaries to make the people memorize everything, and these are particular things that happen here and maybe not in other places.
How is the relationship between Christians and other denominations?
-Living in a country where you are a minority means that you necessarily have to be in contact with people of other faiths. We are talking mainly about Buddhists, because here the percentage of Muslims is very, very small and most of them are foreigners. And when we talk about Christians, we are mostly referring to Catholics, because there are some Protestant churches, but in proportion they are few. So, in reality we are talking about the relationship between Catholics and Buddhists and Catholics and non-believers, because, in a country that is already having decades of formation oriented by the political regime, there are also many atheists.
Normally, the relationship with Buddhists is very positive, very good, also because of the Buddhist idiosyncrasy of great respect for difference, for nature, inner life and rich spirituality, gratitude to God... There is respect, but religion is not really something that is talked about a lot. It is true that Catholics do not hide, they wear external signs that they are Catholics, the cross, and young people upload photos of them at Mass on social networks... It is not that there is shame in manifesting oneself as a Christian, but one thing that is missing is that there is no clear evangelizing program in the Church in Vietnam to approach or bring the Gospel to people of other religious confessions.
Much of the pastoral work of the Church is inward: how to maintain, support, nourish and care for its own Catholics, and there is a little lack of a more daring look, more of going to the periphery in the religious sphere, to be able to proclaim the Gospel to those who do not have faith or those who do not share the same creed. There is something to be done here, to sow a little more missionary spirit within the Vietnamese Catholic Church itself in order to reach out to those who profess other religions.
Are people open to evangelization?
I have the most contact with young people, and non-Christian young people are very open to everything that has to do with the Church. Really, there is no rejection, and they live it with a lot of curiosity. I have also been at the university level teaching at the university. At some point, outside the classroom, the conversation about religion comes up and then I invite them to come to a church, or to come to Mass, or to something. And I have never felt any rejection. Then they tell you: "I didn't understand this, or that", "Ah, I think it's good what I heard, it helps me in my personal life"... It's an atmosphere of openness that I think is very interesting for the evangelizing work of the Church. In fact, the parish priests here know that there are several dates in the year when the Church will be full of non-Christians: for example, on Easter Sunday, or at Christmas, people love to go to the Midnight Mass, because they love the Christmas decorations, the Christmas carols, and many go to Mass without having much idea of what they are doing, but they go.
