Local Catholics Honor Sacrifice And Celebrate Vietnamese Unity

LATimes ^ | November 17, 2014 | ANH DO

[Steelfish]

Local Catholics Honor Sacrifice And Celebrate Vietnamese Unity

A colorful procession outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown L.A. celebrates martyrs and the birth of Catholicism in Vietnam. (Francine Orr) By ANH DO Honoring Catholic saints and celebrating the religion's birth in Vietnam Before Mass, the faithful draped in gleaming headdresses and silk garments turned to welcome an ancient symbol of their modern faith: the bones of three saints who sacrificed their lives for their religion, cementing Roman Catholicism in Vietnam.

Men carry a relic, containing bones of three saints, in a procession during the reunion of Vietnamese Catholics at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

A colorful procession outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown L.A. celebrates Vietnamese martyrs and the birth of the Vietnamese community in Los Angeles.

Archbishop Jose Gomez, seen here in the procession, led a Martyrs' Mass, featuring songs in praise of heroes. Worshipers hailed from Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Ventura counties.

Performers act out a play about the life of St. Phanxico Do Van Chieu, , who was beheaded in Vietnam in 1838 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988.

Pope John Paul II canonized the martyrs and 114 other saints in 1988 — in the largest ceremony of its kind in church history. On Sunday, the celebration of their deeds drew more than 3,000 Catholics to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown L.A., as one family after another spilled from 20 buses, representing 14 parishes from throughout the region and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Organizer Lu Bui noted his mission: "To honor our predecessors, to remind us of our strong faith and to preserve culture.

[Mariamante]

Some exceprts from the Vietnamese constitution.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5139/

The Jacobin Europeans had their way with them.

1945

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center and the South of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people.

To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank-notes and the export trade.

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

[Salvation]

[Forgotten Amendments]

That’s good reading. Thanks!