by Cardinal Stephen Chow, SJ
After a hectic Holy Week, I had the pleasure of visiting the Diocese of Xuan Loc from April 1 to 4 in the company of Father Dominic Nguyen. As of 2021, Xuan Loc has over one million Catholics, over 300 parishes, more than 490 diocesan priests and 180 religious priests. This was my first ever visit to the Diocese, from which the Hong Kong Diocese is blessed with three missionary priests. Besides Father Dominic, there are Father Joseph Nguyen and Father Joachim Pham.
Their presence and service are important to our diocese, challenged by a shortage of priests serving our parishes, which is becoming critical. Hence, my visit to their home diocese with a heart full of gratitude, appreciation, and anticipation was particularly significant. I believe these sentiments were well communicated to Bishop John Van Ngan Do (뗘匡銀寮싱), the clergy and the laity of the diocese whom I had the pleasure to meet during my visit.
I was invited to stay at the Bishop’s Residence, located next to their major seminary, which has almost 400 seminarians. Half of them were of Xuan Loc Diocese and the rest were from nine other dioceses. I was also invited to celebrate the morning Mass at 5:20 and introduce the Hong Kong Diocese and our various ministries to the seminarians in the afternoon. I pray that seeds were sown in their subconsciousness for future discernment of their missions.
We in Hong Kong have benefitted tremendously from missionaries from other dioceses, including those which are no longer blessed with plentiful vocations. They came to us because of their love for the Chinese people and their culture.
Now, we have over 200 priests in Hong Kong but only around 60 are diocesan priests, including retired priests. We must honestly ask ourselves why and how much longer we need to depend on the missionaries. Dioceses should aim at fostering a reasonable degree of self-sufficiency with local clergy, should missionaries reduce to a small number or even nil. However, this really depends on the sense of urgency, generosity and commitment in our lay people, especially our young people and their parents.
This sense of commitment should come from our personal commitment to the faith and mission which we share from Christ, passed down to us through generations of Christians, struggling through numerous harsh circumstances. However, we should not base our commitment on a sense of belonging that stems from a consumer’s mentality, i.e., depending on how good or attractive the Church is to me before I decide if I want to belong to it or not, or by how much.
Instead of asking what the Church can do for me, I would ask what I can do for my Church. Christians in Vietnam are familiar with fostering and celebrating a life of faith under a communist regime. It is more of a matter of accepting and learning to cope with an ardent faith, hope, love, and creativity.
With its good number of vocations, Xuan Loc also has jaw-dropping number of children coming to its parishes. The parish that invited me to celebrate a Children Mass had close to 2,000 children. Their pastor took a few months to train them to respond in a Mass celebrated in English. I could say that their response throughout the Mass was simply impressive. These children are being prepared for a Vietnam opening up to the world. By the way, Vietnam has accepted the official presence of the first papal nuncio since January 31 of this year.
Even though there are changes and concerns with the enactment of the National Security Law and Article 23, we can still enjoy religious freedom here in Hong Kong up to this point in time. There are those who have voted with their feet but there are many more who are remaining for various reasons. It is really up to us to foster and celebrate our Christian faith, passing it to future generations, as well as sharing it with others who have yet to appreciate it.
Finally, both our local Church and Hong Kong must continue to develop as a super hub and bridge for our Church and our country, if Hong Kong is to remain significant! As Church, we want to remain valuable for the various missions of the universal synodal Church.
+ Cardinal Stephen Chow, SJ
