Brisbane’s Vietnamese Catholic Community fulfilled a dream that has been 45 years in the making this month with the opening and dedication of its new church.

About 2000 people attended the opening of the Queen of Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church at Inala.

Vietnamese Catholics in Noumea, New Caledonia, were treated to Masses and pastoral care in their own language during Holy Week and Easter, thanks to a visit by Fr Viet Nguyen SVD.

Fr Viet is the Mission Secretary for the SVD Australia Province, and his visit to Noumea was part of a pastoral outreach begun in 2015 by former Mission Secretary, Fr Truc Phan SVD.

Brisbane’s vibrant and rapidly growing Vietnamese Catholic community is rejoicing as building begins on a new church and community centre that will be the heart of their worship and cultural activities, reports The Catholic Leader.

“It is wonderful – we’ve been waiting for so long, we are going to have our own place we can call home,” chair of the community’s pastoral committee Ken Huynh said.

A new community centre for the Vietnamese Catholic Community of Brisbane will signal a new beginning, filled with hope, and promote an environment of faith, care for each other, and cultural enrichment.

The Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre development at Inala was put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, but is now back underway, with construction beginning on the church and the centre’s office.

Vietnamese SVD student Joseph Hoang Quoc Phan set off for Papua New Guinea as part of the Overseas Training Program wishing to gain experience “in a real mission area”, and, thanks to COVID-19 border restrictions, he got even more mission experience than he bargained for.

Joseph’s OTP training has reached its conclusion, but has been extended because of the pandemic-related international travel restrictions.

Ever since I arrived to Thailand as a missionary in 2007, I have and continue to be engaged in many different ministries. One of my ongoing ministries is with undocumented Vietnamese migrant workers in this country. Being a migrant worker anywhere is quite difficult, but the undocumented status adds even more hardships to one’s life.

As expected, life as an undocumented migrant worker in Thailand has been extremely challenging during these times when the coronavirus pandemic has put a stop to the livelihood of a tremendous number of people. Most Vietnamese migrant workers in Thailand are facing a situation of joblessness, lack of income, and no way to go home because all the ways of leaving the country have been closed by the Thai government in order to fight the pandemic.

New research by SVD missionary Fr Michael Nguyen explores the question of how Vietnamese people might read and understand the famous account in John’s Gospel of Jesus multiplying the loaves in their own cultural context.

Fr Michael, who was born and raised in Vietnam and is a member of the SVD AUS Province, says his study was an attempt at doing mission in dialogue with culture.