HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (UCAN) -- After the French troops were defeated in northern Vietnam in 1954, a massive number of Catholics fled southward.

Thousands of priests, Religious and seminarians joining that exodus provided pastoral care and other support, and helped the migrants settle in the south.

Other Church personnel, however, remained in the north to serve the local Church, despite expectations they would be imprisoned or killed.

Last December, one priest told UCA News that after his seminary in Thai Binh diocese was closed, he and fellow seminarians returned to their farming homes. Some worked for a daily wage in brick kilns or by building roads in Cao Bang, Vietnam's northernmost province, where seven priests reportedly were killed. The priest said he was secretly ordained by the late Bishop Vincent Pham Van Du of Lang Son, who was under house arrest at the church in That Khe from 1959 to 1990. Only one Catholic layman and a seminarian attended the ceremony.

That day, the new priest carried two bundles of firewood on his shoulder to a nearby market and sold them. To celebrate his ordination, he then bought the head of a buffalo and gave it to fellow brick-kiln workers. His own family members and parish priest were not told he had been ordained.

For years, the priest served people quietly yet always fearful of government authorities, who often questioned him about his "illegal" ordination.

During that difficult era, the priest, now in his 60s, lived as seminarian and priest in poverty among poor people, sharing their sorrows and joys. That is precisely why it was such a happy time for him, he said.

When the communists took control of the south in 1975, the government closed or confiscated seminaries, institutes, schools, hospitals, worship places and other Church-run properties. Local clergy and Religious had to live in poverty in cramped conditions. Many volunteered to join people building irrigation channels, working on plantations and doing reforestation in remote areas. The Church personnel did their military service and gave people basic education.

The late Archbishop Paul Nguyen Van Binh of Ho Chi Minh City urged his priests to work and live with the poor in remote areas, to learn how to love and serve the underprivileged. Those who did so scraped a living growing rice and vegetables, raising cattle and even selling food on the street.

Only in this way could they pursue their vocations and serve the faithful. Many priests rode bicycles to serve at the same time in several parishes and shared Church news with their Catholics. Some refused to go abroad.

A parish priest now based in central Vietnam told UCA News in February that the government banned him from performing pastoral services for many years by not recognizing him as a priest. During that period, he could only work fields and fish rivers, but he shared God's word with farmers, listened to their tales of harsh daily challenges and helped them face their problems. He said he treated them as his family members, and they in turn did likewise.

One priest, convinced the government one day would change its policies and join the world community, arranged scholarships to encourage young people to pursue their studies. Poor children had no chance to attend school. People who hated the communists would not allow their offspring to go to schools run by the government, which blocked Catholics from college-level studies.

As the government's doi moi (renovation) policies emerged in the late 1980s, people's material lives began to improve, but the rich-poor gap remains quite wide. Farmers struggle to survive because their production costs are high but their agricultural products must be sold cheaply.

Last year, local media reported that thousands of farmers in Thai Binh province returned land to the government because their income was just 1,000 dong (about US$0.06) a day. Many turned to collecting used items, working as motorbike-taxi drivers or entering the urban workforce.

Some parishes in central Vietnam have only children and the elderly because most young adults now work in cities. Parish priests say the youths come home only for the Tet (Lunar New Year) festival and many go to confession because they have no time to attend Mass or practice their faith away from home.

Most of those adults are poorly educated and unskilled, so they can earn only from 800,000 to 1,500,000 million dong a month as manual workers.

Delivery tricycles or home-made vehicles that carry goods and people from place to place are no longer allowed to use roads and streets. The government enacted this urgent measure in early 2008 to reduce the alarming rise in road accidents and traffic jams. But that leaves the largely uneducated drivers of those vehicles struggling to make a living and support their big families.

In the northern provinces, people recently have been harshly affected by the prolonged cold weather that has killed tens of thousands of their cattle and damaged their crops. Many farmers reportedly cannot afford to grow rice.

In recent years, many churches, houses of study and other Church facilities have been built with financial aid from foreign churches and organizations. The local Church provides clean water, scholarships, vocational skills, health care, basic education, accommodations and other supplies for indigenous migrant workers, poor people and victims of natural disasters.

Some Religious also try to help sex workers, HIV/AIDS patients, women with unwanted pregnancies, street children and orphans. However, the local Church has no national and long-term plan to support such people. Rural and urban dioceses do not cooperate with one another to serve Catholic migrant workers who cannot easily join parishes in the cities where they work.

Unlike the generations who suffered in hard times and wars, many young priests and Religious now have opportunities to study abroad. They are eager to improve themselves, while older clergy and Religious keep working, strongly committed to evangelizing and serving people.

Some Religious have pointed out to UCA News that Religious work mainly in cities, especially Ho Chi Minh City, but few serve poor people and ethnic groups in rural and remote areas, where 80 per cent of Vietnam's people live.

One retired bishop in the central highlands recently lamented that clergy and Religious come mostly from peasant families but quickly adapt to living with modern conveniences, yet few seem eager and willing to serve farmers.

When will they learn to appreciate the Church must be among the people to be the voice of the voiceless, promote the good and fight against injustice?

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Paul Tran is a UCAN correspondent from Vietnam.

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