Departing from Vietnam after 16 years of mission

On several occasions in the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Paul and his companions were forced to change their missionary plans. They wanted to go to Asia (!) but "the Spirit would not allow them" (Acts 8:39 and 16:6). Undaunted, they went elsewhere. Jesus himself, in his mission, is constantly confronted with the unexpected. He is confident, he knows that beyong the inconstancy of everyday life, the providence guides the steps of those who put their trust in God. Four months ago, I had to leave Vietnam for reasons that I don’t understand fully . After sixteen years there, I had to leave everything behind. To tell the truth, I was saddened by the hypocrisy of the local authorities, who at first seemed tolerant and benevolent towards my situation as a foreigner who had been on mission in Vietnam for so many years (Vietnam does not issue official visas for missionaries, so we had to find alternative solutions for obtaining visas), but after a month, abruptly, they decided that I had to leave Vietnam immediately. It was a shock for me and for my community, for a number of reasons: I was the country's religious superior, I was the last foreign Spiritan working there, and I was part of the pioneering mission team in Vietnam.

Formation of the brothers have been my main missionary work and my greatest joy.

Looking back at those 16 years spent in Vietnam, I can say that I enjoyed so many good things. I acquainted with an extremely dynamic Church, in which consecrated life in particular is very much alive. Priests, religious men and women are deeply committed to their ministry. Religious rise very early (usually before 5am), and are faithful to mass and common prayer. They take their ideal of chastity (consecrated celibacy) seriously, they live simply (except in the matter of food, that is always abondant) and many congregations (especially the sisters) are committed to the most fragile members of society: the disabled, orphans and minorities. The laity impressed me with their generosity and the respect and friendship they show to consecrated persons, as well as their piety, especially Marian piety, and the importance they show to liturgy, especially when using songs and traditional prayers. I also admired their courage, hard work and enterprise. The country is also magnificent and varied. The rice fields of the plains and hills, the gigantic rivers, the sea coast that borders Vietnam, the contrast between huge and alive cities and the peaceful life in the countryside punctuated by the work of growing rice, the markets that abound with fruit and vegetables... I've crisscrossed this country from north to south, and I've never been tired of it.

My main work as missionary was to train the brothers to religious life. I did that for almost the whole of my mission in Vietnam. Our brothers deeply impressed me by their simplicity, their joyful character, their generosity… They have given their whole lives for Christ and the Church, and they have a wonderful spirit of service. They sometimes suffered a little from my stormy temperament, but I always had a great esteem for them, and it was mutual.

I met so many people who impressed me by their generosity and their willingness to help our congregation.

Despite this idyllic yet authentic picture, I have to say that after sixteen years in Vietnam, I was longing for new horizons, for reasons inherent to the Vietnamese context. First of all, language has been both my best friend and my best enemy. As a foreigner, I've achieved a mastery of Vietnamese that I've rarely encountered among my foreign peers. The vast majority of foreigners don't speak Vietnamese, and the same is also true of thousands of them who have been living in Vietnam for years, even those who are married to Vietnamese women or men (this case being much rarer). Vietnam is a tonal language, and few people get used to it. Time and again, Vietnamese people have admired my knowledge of the language and my use of tones. And yet..., for someone who has spent sixteen years in Vietnam, I've never felt at ease in this language, the tones I pride myself on using to good effect, are in reality far from being perfectly clear and understandable to all. Above all, my listening comprehension has always fallen far short of my expectations. While it's true that I can have a fairly long conversation with a minority of friends and people who speak very clearly and make the effort to speak more slowly than usual, on the other hand, when people are tackling an unfamiliar topic, I'm completely lost. After a few years, I was hoping that this problem would gradually fade away. Today, I've long since lost my illusions…

Missionary life is also physically demanding. When you live permanently in a tropical climate, getting up at 4.15 a.m. every other day to attend Masses outside (for the sisters or in the parish), living in a megalopolis of over ten million inhabitants, with no greenery, constantly assailed by thousands of scooters, eating rice morning, noon and night (well, I'm exaggerating a little...), you realize that you're burning the candle at both ends, just like the Vietnamese, whose life expectancy rarely exceeds seventy-five years... That's why holidays at home are so enjoyable, since it allows me to sleep 8 hours a night, eat a balanced diet, go for long walks in the countryside in peace and quiet environment, without sweating all the time...

To work with youth is not an easy job due to language barrier but God knows how much I love them.

A major frustration in my missionary experience in Vietnam was the lack of integration into the local Church. The Church in Vietnam is extremely dynamic, as I have pointed out, but it also lives in deep autarky and claims its autonomy. Of course, historically, the Church in Vietnam, which was evangelized almost 500 years ago, was under the leadership of foreign missionaries until 1954 in North Vietnam and 1975 for the whole of Vietnam. With the arrival of the Communist regime and the expulsion of foreigners, including missionaries, the country was brutally freed from its Western ties. Today, although the country is still under communist rule, tensed relations between church and state have calmed down considerably in most parts of the country. A few days ago, moreover, Vietnam signed agreements with the Holy See to enable the Apostolic Nuncio (the representative of the Vatican), who until now resided in Singapore and regularly visited Vietnam, to take up permanent residence in Hanoi. Despite this positive development in religious freedom (tensions remain between Church and State in certain regions of the country and on specific issues), nowadays missionaries are tolerated by bishops and the diocesan Church in general, who are generally very kind to missionaries, but they are never seen as active collaborators of the local Church. Never, ever, has a bishop asked me what the charism of our congregation is and how our congregation can contribute to the development of the local Church. Never has a bishop or priest invited me to work in his diocese or parish. They always took refuge behind an appeal to “prudence due to the sensitive politico-religious context”, enjoining us as missionaries to remain very discreet and therefore in the shadow. In reality, the diocesan Church's cautious attitude is unfortunately not limited to its relations with foreign congregations. All too often, Vietnamese religious are seen as a workforce at the service of diocesan pastoral needs, irrespective of their own charisma. As a result, many Vietnamese religious congregations manage parishes when bishops are short of manpower, and are dismissed when there are enough diocesan priests to replace them. This lack of collaboration with the local Church effectively confines foreign missionaries to roles internal to their congregations. During the sixteen years I've been here, I've been a formator for our brothers for 14 years, and the superior of the group for the last two years. Admittedly, I've been able to celebrate masses in Vietnamese here and there, and do catechesis, weddings, baptisms and funerals for the foreign community, but I've never had a long-term commitment to the service of a Vietnamese pastoral ministry, despite my willingness to be more involved in ministry to the Vietnamese people...

During the last two years, I spent several weeks welcome by the spiritans of India. It has been a great experience !

As superior of the communities in Vietnam and India, I enjoyed this new responsibility and acted as a link between the different communities. Good organizer, I set up meetings and projects together with my confreres and presided or participated to the many celebrations that brightened up the year: first vows, perpetual vows, ordinations, feasts of our founders, community retreats and vacations, etc. I was also confronted with a pronounced individualism on the part of quite a few confreres, for whom personal projects took precedence over the interests of the community. I tried to talk to everyone and sometimes felt powerless when a colleague, mainly out of immaturity or self-interest, just followed his own ideas and plans. Many of my Vietnamese (and Indian) colleagues respected me despite the fact that I was a foreigner. Others seemed only too eager for me to hand over. It's the nature of any human group to have tensions within it. Indeed, the evangelical spirit does not sweep away the intricacies of our human psychology and our sins. The ideal of fraternity is what it is: an ideal, constantly being reworked, nurtured and sometimes reborn from the ashes.

Today, I'm at a crossroads in my life. I'm heading for another horizon, still in Asia. I don't know how long I'll be involved in a country neighboring Vietnam, but I think we must always look to the future with optimism, courage, enthusiasm and also realism. Missionary life is a mixture of passion and routine, of joy and wonder, but also of frustrations that can sometimes border on bitterness. And so it should be. As religious and priests, we are human beings like everyone else, but our joy lies in placing our hope in God, for God works wonders at all times, and Holy is His Name!

See you soon for new adventures in a country whose name I'm still keeping secret...suspense!