New deacons during their ordination at Son Loc Cathedral in Hung Hoa Diocese on Feb. 14.
Posted on 02/25/2023 6:44:48 PM PST by marshmallow
Church hopes 16 new deacons will ease shortage of priests working with people in far-flung villages
New deacons during their ordination at Son Loc Cathedral in Hung Hoa Diocese on Feb. 14.
The ordination of 16 new deacons in a Vietnamese diocese will ease its burden of not having enough priests to work among Hmong ethnic people in its far-flung villages, say Church workers.
Bishop Dominic Hoang Minh Tien of Hung Hoa Diocese in Vietnam's Northwest ordained 16 transitional deacons for the diocese on Feb. 14. Three of them are ethnic Hmong people.
“We hope some of them will be assigned to serve the growing number of Hmong Catholics in our remote areas and to share the pastoral burden with us,” said Father Nguyen Ngoc Ngoan, who works with the diocesan Ministry Committee for the Laity.
Father Ngoan said most Hmong Catholics are in three mountainous provinces of Dien Bien, Lai Chau and Son La.
In the last few decades, Christian numbers have increased in the region of mostly ethnic Hmong people, but the mission suffers from a lack of residential priests, Father Ngoan said.
The three provinces had a few hundred Catholics two decades ago but currently have some 16,000, mostly Hmong, served by some 20 priests, Father Ngoan said. Some 500 adults became Catholics last year, he added.
The three provinces are home to 600,000 Hmong villagers, according to government statistics.
Father Ngoan, who came to work in Dien Bien province in 2016, said he and three other priests “are overloaded with giving pastoral care to 3,000 Catholics, two-thirds of them are Hmong.”
Local people live in at least 12 communities some 30-120 kilometers away from each other connected only by muddy and winding paths, he said.
“We need at least 20 more priests......
(Excerpt) Read more at ucanews.com ...
Hmong are salt of the earth great people by large. They make me think of the Sikhs. Warriors with solid ethics and morals.
Yeh!!!
I guess he’s Hmong friends.
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