The Catholic Church in Vietnam has also seen a rising number of religious vocations in recent years. The country has 8,000 priests and 41 bishops, according to government data. More than 2,800 seminarians were studying for the priesthood across Vietnam in 2020, 100 times more than in Ireland.
More than 20,000 Vietnamese Catholics attended a Mass last Saturday in the Diocese of Phan Thiet, according to Asia News, to mark the opening of the cause of beatification of Monsignor Pierre Lambert de la Motte, a 17th-century French missionary who was the first bishop of Dang Trong, Vietnam.
In September 2023, a delegation of 90 Vietnamese Catholics and seven bishops traveled to Mongolia to see Pope Francis during the pope’s visit to the Asian country.
“We came to Mongolia to ask the pope to visit Vietnam,” Father Huynh The Vinh from Vietnam’s Diocese of Phu Coung told CNA in Ulaanbaatar.
Kimviet Ngo, a Vietnamese Catholic who joined the delegation from her home in Washington, D.C., added: “I really hope that someday the pope can come to Vietnam, because if the pope comes to Vietnam it will change a lot [of] the religious freedom in our country.”
The Vietnamese Constitution guarantees individual freedom of belief and individual religious freedom. However, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which advises branches of the U.S. government, recommended that Vietnam be designated a “country of particular concern” in its 2024 report released this month.
The report cited government persecution of religious groups, especially unregistered independent communities, including Protestant and Buddhist communities. Local authorities have also pressured some attendees of state-controlled Protestant churches to renounce their faith.
Pope Francis was asked about the possibility of a papal trip to Vietnam during his in-flight press conference on his return from Mongolia on Sept. 4.
The pope joked in reply: “If I do not go [to Vietnam], I’m sure that [a future Pope] John XXIV will go!”
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.
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