OF HOPE
2015
T H E
M A G A Z I N E
O F
T H E
C AT H O L I C
C H U R C H
I N
W E S T E R N
WA S H I N G T O N
ellence xc
t Place irs
neral E Ge
W W W. N WC AT H O L I C . O R G SEPTEMBER 2015 | VOL . 3 NO. 7
aves W OF HOPE
Forty years ago, Vietnamese Catholics began heading to sea in search of freedom
I N C A S E YO U MISSED IT
Headlines from NWCatholic.org PAGE 6
F E AT U R E S T O R Y
The gift of a Catholic education PAGE 25
NOROESTE C AT Ó L I C O
De regreso a clases PÁGINAS 28–31
C AT H O L I C V O I C E S
Would you write this column, please? PAGE 34
F
COV E R STO RY
“If we have to die, then this is for our faith.” Tina Luu, recalling her father’s words to his family
aves W OF HOPE
Forty years ago, Vietnamese Catholics began heading to sea in search of freedom By Jean Parietti
A
s roaring waves tossed the 37-foot fishing boat crammed with three-dozen seasick Vietnamese refugees, Hien Tran found a rope and tied himself to his 9-year-old son, nicknamed Can. “I pray with God that if I die, my son die. If my son die, I die — I don’t want to live,” said Tran, a former South Vietnamese military police officer. Twice imprisoned by the communist regime that overtook his homeland, Tran was like hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese people after the 1975 fall of Saigon: willing to risk his life on the open sea in search of liberty, opportunity for his family and the freedom to practice his faith.
18 Northwest Catholic / September 2015 / www.NWCatholic.org
Shutterstock
It wasn’t the first time Tran had fled communist rule. In 1954, when Vietnam was divided in two with communists controlling the north, there was an exodus of Catholics to the south, where they could have personal and religious freedom. Tran was just 10 or 11 when he left with his family. Now, 28 years later, Tran was fleeing with his own young son. Although he had no experience, Tran piloted the long, narrow boat in exchange for free passage for him and Can (there was no room for Tran’s wife, Thoa Nguyen, and their four daughters). The vessel was fired on from afar as it left the mouth of the Song Cai Lon River. Later, it was intercepted by Vietnamese fishermen who stole the refugees’ fuel and valuables. On the third day, they were rescued by a Canadian ship that sheltered them on a barge for 30 days before taking them on to Thailand and the first of four refugee camps. The journey was even more perilous for thousands of other Vietnamese “boat people.” Some were caught and returned to Vietnam. Other refugees faced stormy seas, starvation and violent pirates who raped and robbed, leaving them adrift on the open water. It’s estimated more than 200,000 of them died.
19
COV E R STO RY
HARROWING ESCAPES Chau Nguyen, just 12, prayed that God would keep Thai pirates away from her as they raped women on her boat. Phuong Huynh’s boat tried to turn back, but Vietnamese police and soldiers with AK-47s were waiting on the beach.
Stephen Brashear
Courtesy Henry Tran
Eric Tran was confirmed in a refugee camp in Thailand, where he and his father lived after escaping Vietnam.
Eric and Henry Tran thank God for the blessings and opportunities found in their adopted country.
Religious persecution
chance and see where God would lead us,” said Tina Luu, who was just 10 at the time. He didn’t know if they would find help on the ocean, she said, but told his family, “If we have to die, then this is for our faith.” Although the family became separated in the chaos of hundreds of fishing boats at sea, they were picked up by different ships and reunited in Guam. They were flown to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, and lived there until October 1975, when most of the family was sponsored by a Presbyterian church in Everett. “God sent me over here, but the people of America embraced us,” Tina Luu said. “I can’t be thankful enough for the people of this land.”
Vietnam had a long history of persecuting Catholics: The Vatican estimates 130,000 people were martyred in Vietnam from 1625–1886. They include the 117 Vietnamese martyrs canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988 — missionaries and Vietnamese laity and clergy who were tortured and executed because they refused to renounce their faith. “Communists, they don’t believe in any religion and they especially don’t like Catholics,” said John Tien Luu, a member of both St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Federal Way and Vietnamese Martyrs Parish in Tukwila. Growing up in non-communist South Vietnam in the 1960s, Luu lived in a small farming town where everyone was Catholic and had migrated from the north. The fourth of eight children, Luu recalls going to Mass almost every day, belonging to the parish youth group and singing in the choir. When he was 8, the family moved to a nearby city; Luu entered the minor seminary there in 1974 as a sixth-grader. When communists took over the city in March 1975, they closed the seminary and told the younger students like Luu to go home. The older seminarians were sent to “re-education” prison camps, Luu said, as were his father, brother and many others who had worked for the South Vietnamese government or with the U.S. during the war.
The first wave
Back in Vietnam, Catholics were living with restrictions on their faith and limited opportunities for work and education. Many priests were imprisoned for re-education; those not jailed were allowed to celebrate Mass only on Sunday, and no new priests were ordained, said Deacon Theman Pham, who served in the South Vietnamese navy and escaped with his young family in 1976. In John Luu’s hometown, every church activity required permission. Things were a little looser in the city, but “if you gather, it had to be for Mass only,” Luu said. Other gatherings, like catechism classes, were suspect: “They think we are gathered to oppose them,” he explained. Thousands of Vietnamese made plans to escape by boat. They were hoping to reach refugee camps in places like Thailand or Malaysia, find sponsorship in the U.S. or another free country, then work or go to college and get the rest of the family out of Vietnam. In 1980, 17-year-old John Luu and nine other family members boarded a small fishing boat out of Cam Ranh Bay, uncertain what the future held. They ended up traveling through a typhoon more than 700 miles to the Philippines, where a Navy ship transferred them to a refugee camp on Palawan
20 Northwest Catholic / September 2015 / www.NWCatholic.org
‘A miracle happened’
For Hien and Can Tran, life in refugee camps in Thailand and Indonesia stretched out for 27 months. But they were able to attend Mass and participate in church life; Can was confirmed at one of the camps. Finally, the duo gained a Read these and other stories of local Vietnamese U.S. sponsor and flew to Seattle in 1985. Catholics at NWCatholic.org/features. “It felt like heaven,” Tran said of their arrival. “It just felt like there were a lot of opportunities.” (Eventually, they took on American names: Henry for the father, Eric for the son Island. After nine months, in February 1981, Luu and four of — he wanted his initials to be ET, after the first movie he watched in America, Eric explained). his family members were sponsored by a Catholic family in But it would be six more years, just months before Eric’s Lake Stevens. The others found sponsors in Canada. high school graduation, before his mother and sisters could “I consider it’s my second chance at life and I want to join them in their adopted country. make sure I do whatever I can do to praise God and to give Those years were often a struggle. Henry worked two thanks to God for all the things that we receive,” Luu said. jobs: supermarket butcher by day, janitor at night, sending money to the family back home. Eric worked hard, too, his Just one priest to serve father said, going to school while also learning how to cook Now free of religious restraints, Vietnamese Catholics arriving in Western Washington often found another barrier: and do laundry. Sometimes father and son would only see each other once or twice a week. language. Many couldn’t speak English, It stretched the limits of Eric’s faith. and there was just one Vietnamese“We got here because He prayed and prayed that his family speaking priest to serve their growing would reunite, but when nothing hapnumbers. somebody helped us, we pened after so long, he wondered if God Seattle became the hub for the Vietnamese Catholic community, with 11 got here because a miracle was really there. Later, Eric began realizing “all of my prayers were answered, I other communities established around happened, we got here just didn’t see it. For me to be able to do the archdiocese, from Bellingham to things on my own — to cook, to clean, Vancouver. “They called it the 12 tribes because of our faith.” to do all these things … my mother of Israel,” John Luu said with a laugh. wasn’t there, but those were the answers For a dozen years, the one Vietnamese Eric (Can) Tran that I received.” priest said Mass every Sunday in Seattle, Today, Eric and his wife, Theresa, have then traveled to one of the other commufour young sons, and Henry is grateful that he and Thoa nities to say Mass on Saturday, according to Deacon Pham, have all their children and grandchildren living close by (inwho came to the Puget Sound area in 1977 and became a cluding a son born after the family reunited). Eric, who holds deacon in 2012. an MBA from Seattle University, feels blessed for the opporBy September 1984, some 2,000 Vietnamese Catholics in 400 families had settled in the archdiocese, according to The tunities he’s had in his adopted country and is happy to give back, “because we all don’t get here by ourselves,” he said. Catholic Northwest Progress newspaper. “We got here because somebody helped us, we got here beToday, Vietnamese liturgies are offered regularly at nine parishes. They include Vietnamese Martyrs, which became a cause a miracle happened, we got here because of our faith.” full-fledged parish in 2010 and moved from Seattle to larger quarters in Tukwila in 2014. The parish now has more than 1,600 families, said the pastor, Father Thanh Dao. Because of their experiences, many Vietnamese Catholics are especially dedicated to their faith, said Father Dao, who studied in the “underground seminary” in Vietnam before coming to the U.S. in 1995. “They say … ‘We thank God for saving us, and want to live that faith,’” he said. As the generation of Vietnamese Catholics who escaped the country raise their children in the faith here, being able to attend Vietnamese Mass and foster their cultural roots remains important. “It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to listen to God’s word in your own language,” said Phuong Huynh of St. Michael Parish in Olympia, who was 17 when he escaped Vietnam THRIVING PARISH in 1980. Forty years after its humble beginnings, For the Luus, “Faith and culture goes hand-in-hand for Vietnamese Martyrs Parish is flourishing. us. That’s why we are dual parishioners,” Tina Luu said. Learn more at NWCatholic.org/features. They’ve raised their five children to be active in both their parishes, Vietnamese and American. “It’s important for us
Stephen Brashear
The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, marked the beginnings of the Vietnamese Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Seattle. Often sponsored by Catholics and other people of faith, many refugees found new homes in Western Washington. Among the first wave to arrive here in 1975 were Tina Luu (Thanh-Phuong Bui) and her extended family, who headed out to sea as soon as Saigon was captured. Her father, Huu Dac Bui, a high-ranking police official in the south and an active Catholic, knew his family would be targeted by the communists. He was willing to “take a
Restrictions on Catholics
to make sure that our kids are involved and give back to the community, wherever they live,” she said.
21
T H E
M A G A Z I N E
O F
T H E
C AT H O L I C
C H U R C H
I N
W E S T E R N
WA S H I N G T O N
ellence xc
t Place irs
neral E Ge
W W W. N WC AT H O L I C . O R G SEPTEMBER 2015 | VOL . 3 NO. 7
aves W OF HOPE
Forty years ago, Vietnamese Catholics began heading to sea in search of freedom
I N C A S E YO U MISSED IT
Headlines from NWCatholic.org PAGE 6
F E AT U R E S T O R Y
The gift of a Catholic education PAGE 25
NOROESTE C AT Ó L I C O
De regreso a clases PÁGINAS 28–31
C AT H O L I C V O I C E S
Would you write this column, please? PAGE 34
F
COV E R STO RY
“If we have to die, then this is for our faith.” Tina Luu, recalling her father’s words to his family
aves W OF HOPE
Forty years ago, Vietnamese Catholics began heading to sea in search of freedom By Jean Parietti
A
s roaring waves tossed the 37-foot fishing boat crammed with three-dozen seasick Vietnamese refugees, Hien Tran found a rope and tied himself to his 9-year-old son, nicknamed Can. “I pray with God that if I die, my son die. If my son die, I die — I don’t want to live,” said Tran, a former South Vietnamese military police officer. Twice imprisoned by the communist regime that overtook his homeland, Tran was like hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese people after the 1975 fall of Saigon: willing to risk his life on the open sea in search of liberty, opportunity for his family and the freedom to practice his faith.
18 Northwest Catholic / September 2015 / www.NWCatholic.org
Shutterstock
It wasn’t the first time Tran had fled communist rule. In 1954, when Vietnam was divided in two with communists controlling the north, there was an exodus of Catholics to the south, where they could have personal and religious freedom. Tran was just 10 or 11 when he left with his family. Now, 28 years later, Tran was fleeing with his own young son. Although he had no experience, Tran piloted the long, narrow boat in exchange for free passage for him and Can (there was no room for Tran’s wife, Thoa Nguyen, and their four daughters). The vessel was fired on from afar as it left the mouth of the Song Cai Lon River. Later, it was intercepted by Vietnamese fishermen who stole the refugees’ fuel and valuables. On the third day, they were rescued by a Canadian ship that sheltered them on a barge for 30 days before taking them on to Thailand and the first of four refugee camps. The journey was even more perilous for thousands of other Vietnamese “boat people.” Some were caught and returned to Vietnam. Other refugees faced stormy seas, starvation and violent pirates who raped and robbed, leaving them adrift on the open water. It’s estimated more than 200,000 of them died.
19
COV E R STO RY
HARROWING ESCAPES Chau Nguyen, just 12, prayed that God would keep Thai pirates away from her as they raped women on her boat. Phuong Huynh’s boat tried to turn back, but Vietnamese police and soldiers with AK-47s were waiting on the beach.
Stephen Brashear
Courtesy Henry Tran
Eric Tran was confirmed in a refugee camp in Thailand, where he and his father lived after escaping Vietnam.
Eric and Henry Tran thank God for the blessings and opportunities found in their adopted country.
Religious persecution
chance and see where God would lead us,” said Tina Luu, who was just 10 at the time. He didn’t know if they would find help on the ocean, she said, but told his family, “If we have to die, then this is for our faith.” Although the family became separated in the chaos of hundreds of fishing boats at sea, they were picked up by different ships and reunited in Guam. They were flown to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, and lived there until October 1975, when most of the family was sponsored by a Presbyterian church in Everett. “God sent me over here, but the people of America embraced us,” Tina Luu said. “I can’t be thankful enough for the people of this land.”
Vietnam had a long history of persecuting Catholics: The Vatican estimates 130,000 people were martyred in Vietnam from 1625–1886. They include the 117 Vietnamese martyrs canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988 — missionaries and Vietnamese laity and clergy who were tortured and executed because they refused to renounce their faith. “Communists, they don’t believe in any religion and they especially don’t like Catholics,” said John Tien Luu, a member of both St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Federal Way and Vietnamese Martyrs Parish in Tukwila. Growing up in non-communist South Vietnam in the 1960s, Luu lived in a small farming town where everyone was Catholic and had migrated from the north. The fourth of eight children, Luu recalls going to Mass almost every day, belonging to the parish youth group and singing in the choir. When he was 8, the family moved to a nearby city; Luu entered the minor seminary there in 1974 as a sixth-grader. When communists took over the city in March 1975, they closed the seminary and told the younger students like Luu to go home. The older seminarians were sent to “re-education” prison camps, Luu said, as were his father, brother and many others who had worked for the South Vietnamese government or with the U.S. during the war.
The first wave
Back in Vietnam, Catholics were living with restrictions on their faith and limited opportunities for work and education. Many priests were imprisoned for re-education; those not jailed were allowed to celebrate Mass only on Sunday, and no new priests were ordained, said Deacon Theman Pham, who served in the South Vietnamese navy and escaped with his young family in 1976. In John Luu’s hometown, every church activity required permission. Things were a little looser in the city, but “if you gather, it had to be for Mass only,” Luu said. Other gatherings, like catechism classes, were suspect: “They think we are gathered to oppose them,” he explained. Thousands of Vietnamese made plans to escape by boat. They were hoping to reach refugee camps in places like Thailand or Malaysia, find sponsorship in the U.S. or another free country, then work or go to college and get the rest of the family out of Vietnam. In 1980, 17-year-old John Luu and nine other family members boarded a small fishing boat out of Cam Ranh Bay, uncertain what the future held. They ended up traveling through a typhoon more than 700 miles to the Philippines, where a Navy ship transferred them to a refugee camp on Palawan
20 Northwest Catholic / September 2015 / www.NWCatholic.org
‘A miracle happened’
For Hien and Can Tran, life in refugee camps in Thailand and Indonesia stretched out for 27 months. But they were able to attend Mass and participate in church life; Can was confirmed at one of the camps. Finally, the duo gained a Read these and other stories of local Vietnamese U.S. sponsor and flew to Seattle in 1985. Catholics at NWCatholic.org/features. “It felt like heaven,” Tran said of their arrival. “It just felt like there were a lot of opportunities.” (Eventually, they took on American names: Henry for the father, Eric for the son Island. After nine months, in February 1981, Luu and four of — he wanted his initials to be ET, after the first movie he watched in America, Eric explained). his family members were sponsored by a Catholic family in But it would be six more years, just months before Eric’s Lake Stevens. The others found sponsors in Canada. high school graduation, before his mother and sisters could “I consider it’s my second chance at life and I want to join them in their adopted country. make sure I do whatever I can do to praise God and to give Those years were often a struggle. Henry worked two thanks to God for all the things that we receive,” Luu said. jobs: supermarket butcher by day, janitor at night, sending money to the family back home. Eric worked hard, too, his Just one priest to serve father said, going to school while also learning how to cook Now free of religious restraints, Vietnamese Catholics arriving in Western Washington often found another barrier: and do laundry. Sometimes father and son would only see each other once or twice a week. language. Many couldn’t speak English, It stretched the limits of Eric’s faith. and there was just one Vietnamese“We got here because He prayed and prayed that his family speaking priest to serve their growing would reunite, but when nothing hapnumbers. somebody helped us, we pened after so long, he wondered if God Seattle became the hub for the Vietnamese Catholic community, with 11 got here because a miracle was really there. Later, Eric began realizing “all of my prayers were answered, I other communities established around happened, we got here just didn’t see it. For me to be able to do the archdiocese, from Bellingham to things on my own — to cook, to clean, Vancouver. “They called it the 12 tribes because of our faith.” to do all these things … my mother of Israel,” John Luu said with a laugh. wasn’t there, but those were the answers For a dozen years, the one Vietnamese Eric (Can) Tran that I received.” priest said Mass every Sunday in Seattle, Today, Eric and his wife, Theresa, have then traveled to one of the other commufour young sons, and Henry is grateful that he and Thoa nities to say Mass on Saturday, according to Deacon Pham, have all their children and grandchildren living close by (inwho came to the Puget Sound area in 1977 and became a cluding a son born after the family reunited). Eric, who holds deacon in 2012. an MBA from Seattle University, feels blessed for the opporBy September 1984, some 2,000 Vietnamese Catholics in 400 families had settled in the archdiocese, according to The tunities he’s had in his adopted country and is happy to give back, “because we all don’t get here by ourselves,” he said. Catholic Northwest Progress newspaper. “We got here because somebody helped us, we got here beToday, Vietnamese liturgies are offered regularly at nine parishes. They include Vietnamese Martyrs, which became a cause a miracle happened, we got here because of our faith.” full-fledged parish in 2010 and moved from Seattle to larger quarters in Tukwila in 2014. The parish now has more than 1,600 families, said the pastor, Father Thanh Dao. Because of their experiences, many Vietnamese Catholics are especially dedicated to their faith, said Father Dao, who studied in the “underground seminary” in Vietnam before coming to the U.S. in 1995. “They say … ‘We thank God for saving us, and want to live that faith,’” he said. As the generation of Vietnamese Catholics who escaped the country raise their children in the faith here, being able to attend Vietnamese Mass and foster their cultural roots remains important. “It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to listen to God’s word in your own language,” said Phuong Huynh of St. Michael Parish in Olympia, who was 17 when he escaped Vietnam THRIVING PARISH in 1980. Forty years after its humble beginnings, For the Luus, “Faith and culture goes hand-in-hand for Vietnamese Martyrs Parish is flourishing. us. That’s why we are dual parishioners,” Tina Luu said. Learn more at NWCatholic.org/features. They’ve raised their five children to be active in both their parishes, Vietnamese and American. “It’s important for us
Stephen Brashear
The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, marked the beginnings of the Vietnamese Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Seattle. Often sponsored by Catholics and other people of faith, many refugees found new homes in Western Washington. Among the first wave to arrive here in 1975 were Tina Luu (Thanh-Phuong Bui) and her extended family, who headed out to sea as soon as Saigon was captured. Her father, Huu Dac Bui, a high-ranking police official in the south and an active Catholic, knew his family would be targeted by the communists. He was willing to “take a
Restrictions on Catholics
to make sure that our kids are involved and give back to the community, wherever they live,” she said.
21
