Card. Van Thuân: From Persecution to Beatification, Diocesan Phase of Process Closes

Asia News ^ | 7/3/13

[marshmallow]

Rome (AsiaNews) - He spent 13 years in prison, nine of them in solitary confinement, without ever going to trial, and "while imprisoned in conditions of poverty and hardship of freedom, never lost his nerve, never gave in to hatred towards his captors. As he was being forcibly "re-educated" he used another method to teach his enemies. His guards became his pupils. The sincerity of his relationships changed relations within the prison. " His jailers, secretly, gave him pieces of wood with which he made a cross and a piece of wire, which became a chain. He wore it around his neck for the rest of life, even as a cardinal.

The man was Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuân and next Friday, July 5, the diocesan phase of his beatification process closes.

Born April 17, 1928, in central Vietnam, to a family that had the first Vietnamese martyrs of 1698 among its ancestors, he entered the minor seminary in An Ninh and then the major seminary of Phu Xuan. On June 11, 1953 he was ordained priest and sent to the parish of St. Francis as a curate. A few months later he was appointed chaplain of the Pellerin Institute (where he had received his education), the central hospital and the provincial prison.

Sent to Rome to continue his studies, he graduated in Canon Law at the Pontifical Urbanianum University. On returning to Vietnam he was first a professor and then rector of the Hue seminary, the diocese where he became vicar general in 1964. On April 13, 1967, Paul VI appointed him the first Vietnamese bishop of Nha Trang. He chose Gaudium et Spes as his motto as he wished to be an apostle of joy and peace.

[GBA]

As he was being forcibly "re-educated" he used another method to teach his enemies. His guards became his pupils.

Yup. That's how the Lord works. How cool is that?

[Tax-chick]

He was a great man.