HANOI (UCAN): The Archdiocese of Hanoi has begun the sainthood cause of a France-born Bishop François Pallu, a first for Vietnam. Archbishop Joseph Vu Van Thien presided over the formal opening of the diocesan inquiry on October 29.
Some 3,000 people joined for the event, held on the occasion of the 339th anniversary of the bishop’s death.
“Today we open the beatification and canonisation cause of Bishop Pallu, who devoted all his life to evangelisation in our homeland,” Archbishop Thien said, noting that the first bishop of Dang Ngoai [northern Vietnam], came “to sow the seeds of the Good News” nearly 400 years ago. Hanoi and 10 other dioceses in the northern region consider Dang Ngoai as their mother diocese.
Present at the ceremony were Singapore-based Archbishop Marek Zalewski, non-resident representative of the Holy See to Vietnam, Father Vincent Sénéchal and Father Balthazar Castelino from the Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris [MEP], and 17 bishops.
Bishop Pallu is considered one of the co-founders of MEP, the prime missionary congregation that worked in the region.
Archbishop Joseph Nguyen Nang of Ho Chi Minh City, head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam, said that this was for the first time the Church in Vietnam has opened a diocesan inquiry into a missionary’s canonisation cause.
The event brings joy and pride to the local as well as the universal Church, the prelate said.
“We long for a missionary saint so that we can follow his evangelisation examples and appeal to him to give us sheer inspiration and passion for proclaiming the gospel. It is the main aim of the ceremony,” Archbishop Nguyen said in his homily.
The archbishop said Bishop Pallu had a lifelong passion for bringing Christian values to Asia and built a firm foundation and evangelisation guidelines for the local Church.
