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| Redemptorists in the lastest Prayer Vigil on July 27,2009 |
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| Sisters from various Orders in the lastest Prayer Vigil on July 27,2009 |
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| Lay people in the lastest Prayer Vigil on July 27,2009 |
In a move described by many Catholics as “sudden”, People’s Committee of the Third District of Ho Chi Minh city issued an official correspondence attacking fiercely Redemptorists with severe denunciations.
“The church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help has organised many great mass ‘Communion Prayer Vigils’ with the participation of many priests, religious and lay people from other regions without registration to the local government in order to distort, falsely accuse, and criticise the government. Also, the bulletin board of the church has been used to publicly post articles and images driving believers to misunderstanding against the Party’s policy, and the nation law,” wrote Pham Ngoc Huu, chairman of the Committee, in his correspondence dated Dec. 28, which was then simultaneously published on major state media.
As a matter of fact, during the last two years, the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, administered by Redemptorists has held Prayer Vigils to support its sister church at Thai Ha, Hanoi in the quest to regain Redemptorists’ properties in the capital. Since then, the church, located at 38 Ky Dong St. in the Third District of the city, has been strictly monitored by a large mass of police both in uniform and in plain clothes. Churchgoers can see, in most gatherings including Sunday Masses, plain-clothes police mingle in their ranks, taking photos and filming with video cameras.
Local authorities have even gone further installing loudspeakers on buildings surrounding the church to spill out all sort of noise to disrupt its Sunday Masses and its Weekly Perpetual Novenas held on each Saturday. It’s worth noting that these buildings had belonged to the church before the communist takeover of Saigon in 1975.
The attack of the Committee against the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help came all of a sudden. The latest mass Prayer Vigil, as mentioned in the correspondence, was held months ago, precisely on July 27, 2009, after two priests in the city of Dong Hoi had been beaten brutally by plain-clothed police and a group of thugs employed by the local government. No recent activities of the church seemed to be a direct reason for the move.
After attacking the church, Huu turned his fury toward Redemptorist Father Joseph Le Quang Uy, a well-known pro-life activist in Vietnam. Again, no recent activities of the priest could justify for the attack.
“Le Quang Uy has given a hand to hostile forces, and reactionaries to conduct propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” Huu severely accused Fr. Joseph Le.
The priest was also charged with “taking advantage of his role of leading prayers in Vigils to distort the social, political and economic situation of Vietnam, and denounce the government for human rights violations,” and thus “undermines the great national unity bloc.”
During June 2009, and a couple of months later, the state-owned media repeatedly accused Father Joseph Le of “conducting propaganda against the state” and “plotting to overthrow the communist regime,” calling for "immediate and severe punishment under Article 88 of the Penal Code, [in which if convicted he could faces a 3- to 20-year prison sentence]”.
Father Joseph Le Quang Uy, a pro-life hero and an outspoken critic of recent bauxite-extraction mining in the Central Highlands region, was detained at Tan Son Nhat airport on Saturday June 6, 2009 as he was returning home from a pastoral trip abroad. His luggage had been searched meticulously and his laptop was confiscated by the airport security and customs agents. The priest was later released but he suffered a campaign of smearing that lasted for months.
Citing a phrase from Pope Benedict XVI's speech to Vietnamese bishops on June 27, 2009 “a good Catholic is a good citizen”, Huu strongly criticised Vietnamese Redemptorists of not following their universal spiritual leader. He, however, conveniently ignored the most recent Statement the Vietnamese Episcopal Conference made during its meeting in 2008, which pointed out that the underlying cause for the social unrests and mistrust people had toward the government was triggered by the inconsistency and opacity of the land law as well as the deceitful way the state run media had been conducting.
Deriding the shameful distortion against the Pope's speech, Redemptorist Father Peter Nguyen Van Khai, the spokesperson of Redemptorists emphasised that Pope Benedict XVI had expressed his desire to see “a healthy collaboration between the Church and the State through dialogue.”
“There won’t be any fruitful dialogue if you keep begging this government,” the priest said stating that Catholics should pursue the road to dialogue not by being silent in the face of atrocities and repression but by standing up to defend legal rights of the Church and their brothers and sisters.
“Our petitions for the requisition of our properties had usually been ignored. But recently, the local government began to hold meetings with us. We have not gained any expected results yet. But at least, they agreed to sit down and talk with us. It’s a positive sign,” he gave an example.
Catholics in Vietnam fear that the road to a fruitful dialogue with the atheist government is still so uphill and challenging with an enormous amount of obstacles. Vietnamese officials at all levels seem not be ready for such a dialogue. Instead, they still tend to lean towards using violence. The move of People’s Committee of the Third District of Ho Chi Minh city may harbinger a new wave of attack against the priest and other Redemptorists.