Hanoi (AsiaNews) – The story between Mother Teresa and Vietnam is one full of contrasts. From 1991 to 1995, the Blessed visited the country five times. State media now describe her in highly positive terms but the government continues to reject applications by the Missionaries of Charity to operate in the country because it is a foreign religious organisation. Only the Vietnamese Missionaries of Christ’s Charity can work, and this under difficult circumstances and only from a small home. At present, they include about 100 nuns with 50 members applying each year to work among the poor, lonely seniors, prostitutes, people living with AIDS and others.
Before Vietnam’s reunification in 1975, Mother Teresa and Father Andrew had sent seven missionary brothers from India. At the time, then Archbishop of Saigon Paul Nguyen Van Binh provided them with two homes from where they could work. After the Communists took over, the missionaries were forced to leave the country, and moved to Phnom Penh, in Cambodia.
Only in 1991, 16 years later, did Mother Teresa meet local government authorities. When she visited Vietnamese nuns, she said that “the world have had too many bombs and weapons. War cannot bring peace and happiness for people [. . .] just love and charity can bring goodness to us. We can begin by our smile with other people. Now many people have suffered great misery due to hunger, lack of shelter, and sickness . . . . I think however that the biggest misery is being alone and not loved. This is the most terrible disease and anyone is able to feel it.”
Mother Teresa visited the country a second time in 1993. She spent a week in Ho Chi Minh City, working with and sharing the life of the nuns at Tan Hoa parish, in Phu Nhuan District.
On 8 November, the Blessed met Vietnam’s foreign minister, Mr Nguyen Manh Cam, and the country’s deputy minister of Labour, War Disabled and Social Welfare, Ms Nguyen Thi Hang, to ask them for a home for her congregation so that it could take care of the needy. Five nuns were thus able to open a home in Ho Chi Minh City and four more began working in Hanoi helping children, the poor and the elderly.
The next year, 1994, Mother Teresa was invited by the Ministry of Labour, War Disabled and Social Welfare. This time, she came with eight nuns to work in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tu Xuong Street, in District 3. The nuns also took in and cared for disabled children in centres in Thuy An, Ba Vi and Hung Hoa, in the north. Mother Teresa asked the government to allow her international congregation to work in the country but Vietnamese authorities did not respond. Vietnam’s government does not allow foreign religious to work in Vietnam.
In April 1994, Mother Teresa visited Fr Ho Han Thanh from the diocese of Ban Me Thuat in Cho Ray Hospital. The clergyman was in a room with an elderly man who had worked for the Communist Party for 40 years.
When she came in the room, she went directly to the Communist official to ask him how he was doing. She learnt that he was suffering from heart problems. She put a hand on his chest, prayed for a few minutes and gave him a picture of Our Lady of Grace. She told him, “Mother Mary blesses you and shall help you overcome the disease soon.” Then, she went over to Fr Thanh and prayed with him.
Days later, a sister of the Missionaries of Charity came to visit the clergyman and was moved when she saw that the official still had the photo of Mother Mary gave him in his pocket.
On 20 December 1995, Mother Teresa was back in Hanoi to ask the government to extend the nuns’ visas. She got no response. Permits and visas for the seven missionaries of charity operating in the country were set to expire on Christmas Day 1995. They were not renewed.
During her visit, she came down with high fever on 23 December and had to leave Hanoi for a hospital in Singapore.
Recently, Vietnam’s state media wrote that Mother Teresa was a name full of love, known by all the nations of the world, that her life and morality make her a worthy and well-remembered person.
Yet, Hanoi continues to refuse the presence of Mother Teresa’s missionaries because they are an “international congregation” of foreign nuns.
The authorities know the congregation very well, but fear its influence in areas where its own mass organisations operate.
