Editor’s Note: Bishop Vann’s column centered on World Mission Sunday (Oct. 19), is featured in the October issue of Mission: A Magazine of The Pontifical Mission Societies. The Pontifical Mission Societies (TPMS) “are a worldwide network at the service of the Pope, supporting the missions and young Churches through prayer and charity.”
DEAR FRIENDS IN THE LORD, My involvement with The Pontifical Mission Societies has been a real blessing of my ministry. Among all the responsibilities I’ve held with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, few have touched me more personally than the opportunity to accompany the Vietnamese people—in prayer, in pilgrimage, and in their missionary spirit.
Here in Orange County, we are home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Saigon. A simple walk through Little Saigon reveals a thriving expression of Vietnamese faith and culture. In fact, the rector of our beloved Christ Cathedral, Fr. Bao Thai, is himself Vietnamese American. The Church here is truly universal. And within the vibrant Vietnamese Catholic community, I have come to witness the beauty and strength of a faith refined through suffering, resilience, and hope.
My connection with Vietnam goes back far beyond my visits there in recent years. In fact, it reaches back to the 1960s. I was just a young man when the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis in Springfield, Illinois, where I grew up, sent two Sisters—Sister Helen Reisch and Sister Rosemary Valcheck—to serve in Vietnam as nurses and medical missionaries. Their courage made a deep impression on the Catholic community, and on me personally. It was one of the first moments I realized the Church’s mission knows no borders. A decade later, when I began studying theology at Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis in the fall of 1977, the Vietnam War still lingered in memory and emotion. That year, I met seminarians from a Vietnamese religious community I had never heard of before: the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix. They had come to the United States as refugees.
Thanks to the vision and generosity of Bishop Bernard Law of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, the entire community was welcomed and given a new home—the former OMI (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) minor seminary in Carthage, Missouri. None of us could have imagined then what God’s providence had in store. That small beginning would eventually blossom into one of the largest Marian Days celebrations in the world, drawing tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics to Missouri each summer. But back then, they were simply our brothers in formation, men with stories of unimaginable loss and courage. We lived with them in the seminary corridors, prayed with them at Mass, and shared our vocations. These were men who had fled war, persecution, and exile, and who carried those wounds with grace and perseverance. For us Midwestern seminarians— many of us of Irish, German, or Polish heritage—it was a humbling encounter with the human cost of war and the power of shared faith. The differences in language and culture faded in the face of a shared call: to follow Christ, and to serve His people.
I remember thinking then, as I do now, that this is what it means to be part of the Body of Christ: to carry one another’s burdens, to listen to one another’s stories, and to walk together in mission. Today, as the Church in Vietnam continues to grow—often in silence, under restrictions and hardships—I give thanks for the faith and witness of the Vietnamese people. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope and the first in modern times to have served as a missionary priest, recently affirmed the importance of World Mission Sunday, saying: “We see the importance of fostering a spirit of missionary discipleship in all the baptized and a sense of the urgency of bringing Christ to all people. In this regard, I would like to thank you and your associates for your efforts each year in promoting World Mission Sunday on the second-to-last Sunday of October, which is of immense help to me in my solicitude for the Churches in areas which are under the care of the Dicastery for Evangelization.”
As we prepare to celebrate World Mission Sunday on October 19, I invite all of us—priests, religious, lay faithful—to renew our commitment to the Church’s missionary mandate. Let us not forget those communities where the Gospel is still taking root, where Masses are celebrated in secret, and where young people form the heartbeat of the Church. May we be generous in our prayers and support. And may we learn, as I have, from the quiet strength and joyful witness of the Vietnamese faithful—both in Vietnam and here in our own neighborhoods.
As I now spend time with the Vietnamese community in “Little Saigon” on many occasions, and as I stop to pray—often late at night—at the Shrine of Our Lady of La Vang in our diocese, I find myself reflecting on how much we owe to the Vietnamese Catholic faithful. I think of my mother, Theresa, who first introduced us to Mary, and I give thanks for how devotion to the Blessed Mother continues to unite and sustain us across cultures. Witnessing the vitality of Vietnamese Catholic life here in Orange County and across the country, I often ask myself: Where would we be without their witness? Out of the pain, tragedy, and displacement of the late 1960s has come a flourishing of new life, new vocations, and renewed hope. It is yet another reminder to trust always in the mysterious providence and enduring love of God.
Let us go forth together, following Christ as His missionaries, wherever we are planted.