Vietnam bishops ask govt to invite Pope
VATICAN CITY - Vietnamese
bishops want the Communist government to issue an
official invitation to Pope John Paul to visit in 1999,
Fides, the news agency of the Vatican's missionary arm,
reported on Monday.
Fides said that if the government gave its approval, the
Pope could visit next August to conclude the
celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the apparition
of Our Lady of La Vang on August 15.
This year's La Vang celebration attracted more than
100,000 emotional pilgrims and was Vietnam's largest
Catholic festival, sparking high hopes that tough times
were over for the country's believers.
Last March, Vietnam's top Catholic, Cardinal
Phaolo-Guise Phan Dinh Tung, had made an informal
request to the government of Hanoi to ask Cardinal
Roger Etchegaray, formerly head of the Vatican's
Council for Justice and Peace and now president of a
committee preparing for celebrations of the start of the
new millennium, to open this year's festival.
Fides said the Vietnamese cardinal was ``advised'' not to
present a formal request.
Pope John Paul in June replaced Etchegaray at the
Council for Justice and Peace, one of the Vatican's most
high-profile posts, with Archbishop Francois Xavier
Nguyen Van Thuan, a Vietnamese bishop who spent 13
years in prison.
The bishops' decision to invite the Polish-born Pontiff
was taken unanimously by the Vietnamese Bishops'
Conference which met from October 11-18, Fides said.
Vietnam's Roman Catholic community numbers eight
million and is Southeast Asia's largest outside the
Philippines.
While the atmosphere for worshippers in Vietnam has
eased in recent years, religious groups still face curbs.
Reuters - October 26, 1998.
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