~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Vietnam’s PM may meet pope

HANOI - The Vatican and Vietnam are considering arranging the first meeting between a pope and a prime minister of the Communist country, Catholic church sources in Hanoi said. No date has yet been set, but Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung could visit Pope Benedict XVI in the next few weeks, they said, despite the fact that Hanoi and the Holy See have no formal diplomatic relations.

"The Vatican and the Vietnamese embassy in Rome are currently working on a meeting between Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and the pope during his next visit to Italy," a senior Catholic official in Hanoi said. "However, no official announcement on this meeting has been released yet." Other well-informed sources said they had heard about top-level discussions, in what would be a significant step toward establishing bilateral ties. Last month, the English-language Saigon Times daily said Dung would go to Rome "early (this) year at the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI", quoting the deputy chairman of the government office, Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

"The upcoming Vatican visit, the first by a Vietnamese prime minister, will play a key role in completing Vietnam’s establishment of international diplomatic relations in all spheres," the paper quoted Phuc as saying. Dung has scheduled a trip to Paris, Rome and Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum later this month. The tour has yet to be confirmed and could be postponed or cancelled by a meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Vietnam’s government committee for religious affairs and foreign affairs ministry declined to comment. If the Vatican visit is confirmed, it would be the first time a Vietnamese prime minister has met a pope, observers noted.

About six million of Vietnam’s 84 million people are Catholics - the second largest group of followers in Southeast Asia after the Philippines. Several foreign observers have noted a thaw in relations in recent months, saying normalisation of Vietnam-Vatican ties is only a matter of time. The Hanoi regime had tense relations with the previous pope, John Paul II, who was deemed as a contributor the defeat of communism in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

But it congratulated Benedict XVI soon after he became pope in 2005, saying it hoped he would "contribute toward accelerating the relations between Vietnam and the Vatican so that they grow day by day."

Agence France Presse - January 10, 2007.