Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
Sunday, 26 October 2025
by Andrew Doan Thanh PhongHa Tien (Agenzia Fides) – “In the past, we longed for a Sunday Mass, sometimes it took a whole month for a priest to come and celebrate Mass. Now, we feel warm when there is a church, and the presence of a priest, and nuns accompanying us, we are much happ?e as if we were connected to the mainland. This church is not only a place to pray, but also a lighthouse that keeps our faith steadfast amid the storms of life in the open sea”.Mrs. Maria Tran Thi Be, a long-time parishioner on the island, shared when talking about the Hon Tre Catholic community of Ha Tien parish, Long Xuyen diocese in Southern Vietnam.Currently, there are daily masses in Hon Tre and Hon Giang islands which are under pastoral care of priest Vincent Nguyen Minh Phung. In a distance of 7 km apart from each other and 28 km from the mainland, these two islands belong to the Hai Tac (Pirate) archipelago, the southernmost point of the country, and a one-hour speedboat is the only way to reach there from the mainland of Ha Tien town.The name “Pirate” was given to this archipelago because pirates stationed there in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in order to attack merchant ships passing this sea area. This Pirate archipelago consists of 16 large and small islands, of which the largest and most populous is Hon Tre, where the church is located and there are more than 220 parishioners living mainly on fishing.Despite the hardships of making a living, their faith life is still maintained fervently, they regularly attend daily mass and organize major liturgical ceremonies such as Holy Week with fervor and sincerity. Education for local fishermen’s children is very difficult not only due to the lack of schools and teachers but also due to poverty and a lack of motivation to study from the children and their parents.Thanks to the presence of The Sisters of Our Lady of the Mission on this archipelago who have accompanied the local fishing families by encouraging their children to go to school and teaching directly to them, the children have developed comprehensively, and that they actively participate in activities at school and the church.The “ups” and “downs” of a story that began in the 1960sThe Catholic community on Hon Tre started in the 1960s, when a number of Catholic families came to Hai Tac Island to make a living. Later on, a church, a school and a medical station were built by the local parishioners and priest Michael Le Tan Cong, despite being small, they marked the presence of faith on this remote island. However, the journey of their faith was not easy because many parishioners left the island after the Vietnam War ended in 1975.The community here had a long period of lack of priest therefore all religious activities like teaching catechism … had to be done by local parishioners.Mrs. Anna Nguyen Thi Hong (75 years old, a parishioner from Hon Giang), who witnessed the ups and downs of the parish, recalled: “In the past, the priest came only once a month for the mass celebrations. During the windy season, we had to wait for a month and a half. We, the old women, could only hug the statue of the Virgin Mary and prayed for the priest to arrive safely here. The life of fishermen was already adrift, and without prayers and mass, we found it more precarious than a boat in the middle of the night sea.”In recent years, Catholic life in Hon Giang has completely changed thanks to the special care of the diocese and religious orders, in particular since the regular presence of Father Vincent Nguyen Minh Phung.To ensure that the faith is not interrupted, four days a week, Father Phung goes on a small boat from Hon Tre to Hon Giang for mass celebration. Ms Nguyen Thi Suong, a parishioner said: “Now, not only do we have regular masses, but our children are also taught well by the nuns. For us, the church here is not only a place of prayer but also a lighthouse that maintains the souls of people on the island, and helps us live compassionately, study more, and to keep the faith in the midst of hardships of life as our priest and the bishop of the diocese usually taught”.The doctor who brought the seeds of faith to Li SonAnother remote island called Ly Son where the seeds of faith were not sown by missionaries but by a traditional medicine doctor, Mr. Duong Minh Giang, when he was sent to this island for work in 1959, and after renting a room at a local fisherman’s house, he asked the house owner to set up an altar of Jesus Christ. After that, his whole family converted to Roman Catholicism for the house owner was impressed by the way he prayed, by the prayers he pleaded and through his daily moral life.And luckily only in a short time later, Ly Son became a mission point with a small chapel where is currently the Ly Son church. That is the only one parish on this island district covering a large area of 10.39 km² in Quang Ngai province, Central Vietnam with the population of 22,174 people. In 1966, the first priest sent here was Father Peter Nguyen Hoang Diep who had great contributions in teaching the local children on the island regardless of their religion.After the war ended in 1975, the religious life on Ly Son Island faced difficulties under control of the new communist government. All the facilities in this parish such as the chapel and the parish houses were requisitioned by the government as state-run properties and used for teaching, military stationing, food storage, etc…and then left abandoned. And during such a period of 14 years, there were no priests and no mass celebrations, and no religious sacraments, the local parishioners had to manage by themselves for maintaining the faith Christ. Luckily, Ly Son church was returned on December 16, 1993 after a long time that parishioners submitted applications to the authorities at all levels to reclaim the church. Therefore, this Catholic community is considered to be a place where only parishioners sow the seeds of faith, preserve their religious life, and reclaim their church. Until 1995, Ly Son parish was established by Bishop Paul Huynh Dong Cac, Bishop of Qui Nhon Diocese, and Father Michael Truong Van Hanh became the first parish priest. In 2005, Father Peter Pham Duc Thanh was the parish priest, in addition to building the parish’s facilities, he also focused on education for the children of poor fishermen where studying was still in difficulty. There are currently 521 parishioners in Ly Son parish located in a poor and isolated island area. (Agenzia Fides, 26/10/2025)
Share: