SA PA (CNS): Father Peter Nguyen Truong Giang rises early to prepare for the journey to Den Thang mission in Vietnam. It’s a cool morning as he loads rice, instant noodles, cooking oil, fish sauce and salt onto a pickup truck he borrows from a local.
Father Nguyen and two lay leaders leave Lao Chai parish at 6.00am for the mission, which, while just around 30 kilometres away, takes about three hours to reach via a narrow, steep, winding, rough, muddy and forested path full of potholes.
They visit and offer food to some 10 Hmong ethnic families who have converted to Catholicism in recent years.
“Because of the difficult roads, I have visited this mission station three times since I moved to Lao Chai parish in late 2019,” the priest told ucanews.com, adding that he is looking for land to buy and build a chapel.
The 41-year-old Father Nguyen and two women religious serve the parish’s 1,400 Catholics most of whom are Hmong residing in six sub-parishes and missions. The farthest is 40 kilometres from the parish house in the Sa Pa district of Lao Cai province.
The parishioners are poor, so the parish and its sub-parishes lack the most basic facilities for worship and ministry with four small wooden chapels built on local people’s land.
Ordained in 2017, Father Nguyen said the chapels are owned by locals only on paper. The Lao Chai has not yet been recognised by Vietnam’s government after the Diocese of Hung Hoa separated it from Sa Pa parish in 2019.
“I try to celebrate weekly Masses at the chapels so as to maintain religious activities among local people and promote their faith life,” he said. Many who attend are catechumens preparing for entry into the Church.
The breathtaking rice terraces in Muong Hoa Valley are a popular tourist destination but the Hmong gain no benefits from the visitors.
Father Nguyen said he celebrates Mass in both Hmong and Vietnamese, allowing the local people to preserve their heritage while improving their Vietnamese. Fluency in the national language is essential so the Hmong can work with others, seek jobs and avoid rapacious traders and human traffickers, he explained.
He serves as deputy of the diocesan Ministry Committee for Ethnic Minorities, which provides pastoral services and evangelises among more than 20,000 Hmong Catholics and other ethnic groups in the country’s largest diocese, which covers part of Hanoi and nine mountainous provinces.
Locals were introduced to Catholicism in the late 19th century.
Father Giang said he has been interested in evangelisation among Hmong people since he was a seminarian. He spent summer vacations providing pastoral services to Hmong communities. He also taught them the Hmong written language and learned the spoken language from them.
In the past two years The Committee for Ethnic Minorities produced a Vietnamese-Hmong dictionary and held summer courses in the Hmong language for members of parish councils, lay missionaries and catechists.
Sister Mary Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen of the Lovers of the Holy Cross, one of the two sisters who work at the parish, said they train lay missionaries for work in the villages.
She said many couples have not celebrated their weddings in church. Some women and their children, but not their husbands, embrace the Catholic faith and many men have more than one wife.
Hmong villagers harvest one rice crop annually and suffer a lack of food for four months of the year. They must borrow money to survive.
The breathtaking rice terraces in Muong Hoa Valley are a popular tourist destination but the Hmong gain no benefits from the visitors.
The national power grid and inter-village roads are not built in the area where 10 hydroelectric plants operate. Local people must install water generators to supply power for their needs.
“I love them because they are treated unfairly here,” Father Nguyen said, explaining that local authorities charge tourists the equivalent of $25 each in entrance fees, but that proceeds not shared with the villagers who have owned the spectacular terraces for generations.
“We daily work from 5.00am to 10.00pm, especially on the weekend when we visit and provide pastoral services for people at local chapels,” he said. They also cook, wash their clothes, clean the chapels and repair water pipes and electric systems by themselves. Locals use plastic pipes to get water from small brooks.
Michael Lo A Lu, a Hmong parishioner, expressed gratitude for Father Nguyen’s efforts to bring people together, look after people in need and find benefactors to provide food for the community. The priest also helps people to earn an income by inviting Catholic tourists to stay at their homes.
Joseph Sung A Lung, said Father Nguyen celebrates Mass at his home and encourages people to be true to their faith under any circumstances.
“The priest’s emotional and material support affords us great consolation to overcome daily challenges,” Sung, the 39-year-old father of five, said. “We are proud of our priest, who treats us like his family.”
Father Peter Pham Thanh Binh, the parish priest of Sa Pa, said the number of Catholics has increased from 1,000 in 2007 to more than 3,000 today in three parishes and 15 sub-parishes and missions.
Father Pham, baptised 130 Hmong adults and children—a record number—at Hau Thao Parish in August. The Diocese of Hung Hoa records some 700 Hmong converts per year.
The 49-year-old priest repaired Sa Pa’s stone church and built Hau Thao church and 10 chapels. A new pastoral centre is under construction next to the church.
He said the parish also builds houses for homeless people, covers health care costs for poor patients, pays for funerals and offers free accommodation to hundreds of high school students.
