HA NOI (UCAN) -- Officials and patients from state-run leprosariums visited Church personnel for the first time, urging them to provide intensive service for people suffering from leprosy.

On Dec. 21, some 30 officials, health-care workers and people with leprosy, or Hansen's disease, visited Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of Ha Noi and the board of directors of Saint Joseph Major Seminary in the capital.

They came from the six leprosariums in northern Vietnam to offer holiday greetings and presented a flower bouquet, tea set and flask as gifts.

The six facilities are Ba Sao leprosarium in Ha Nam province, Chi Linh in Hai Duong province, Phu Binh in Thai Nguyen province, Qua Cam in Bac Ninh province, Quoc Oai in Ha Tay province and Van Mon in Thai Binh province. They are all 50-120 kilometers from Ha Noi.

Before having lunch at the major seminary, Doctor Bui Huy Thien, head of Van Mon leprosarium, expressed the delegation's gratitude to local Church workers whose wholehearted service has brought joy to patients and their children. "We long for you to send more seminarians to serve in leprosariums in the coming years," the official told the Church leaders.

A Phu Binh resident said patients there want seminarians to visit regularly, especially in summer months. He acknowledged that they have received much material and spiritual support from nuns, priests and seminarians.

"All patients want to meet seminarians. Their service makes elderly patients feel less lonely and miserable, and children learn good things," he added.

Father Laurense Chu Van Minh, the seminary rector, told the delegation that "health workers and seminarians should work together in healing patients' physical and spiritual wounds." He thanked the visitors for what they did for his seminarians. When serving patients, he explained, "seminarians can also learn valuable things for their future priesthood."

Archbishop Kiet told UCA News this first-such visit showed that the two sides "understand each other and want to actively cooperate in improving leprosy patients' life, materially and spiritually."

The delegation gave positive feedback on summer pastoral activities performed by his seminarians at the leprosariums last July, he said. He too thanked leprosarium officials for their cooperation, without which, he said, "we would not have done anything."

According to the Church leader, the officials' support means priests and seminarians can visit and serve the patients at any time without difficulty.

He said the local Church would send 100 seminarians to serve at leprosariums from June to August next year. In the past, he noted, 50 seminarians worked at the facilities for one month.

Joseph Nguyen Tien Khiem, a third-year student who served at Van Mon in 2005, told UCA News that he and other seminarians cared for weak patients, and taught songs, games, and English and other subjects to the children of patients recovering from the disease.

In Khiem's view, the seminary's board of directors has improved formation by sending seminarians to serve parishes and centers for the underprivileged, as part of summer pastoral activities. Those activities create opportunities "to strengthen our priestly vocation and approach poor people, leprosy patients and disabled people."

Archbishop Kiet said that around Christmas, Catholics from local parishes and seminarians visited various government-run centers for disabled children, elderly people and orphans to distribute gifts, stage performances and tell Christmas stories. He described this as a concrete response to the pastoral letter Love and Serve People, which the Vietnamese bishops issued at their annual meeting in September.

END