Answer to Their Prayers : Vietnamese Catholic Contingent to Get Private Meeting With Pope as Highlight of Denver Pilgrimage

Cathy Thao Nguyen, 16, and more than 900 other Vietnamese residents of Orange County have an important rendezvous in Denver in two weeks: a private meeting with Pope John Paul II.

“Whenever I think about it, I want to burst,” the Fountain Valley teen said. “It’s not often you get to see the Pope.”

The pontiff will preside over World Youth Day festivities in Colorado Aug. 11-15, the first time the event has been held in the United States. The Pope created the celebration seven years ago to tap the enthusiasm of Catholic youth and to emphasize the important role teens play in evangelizing to their difficult-to-reach generation.

More than 160,000 people, ages 13 to 39, from 77 countries have registered to attend. Two thousand are from Orange County.

The local Vietnamese contingent is especially excited about the trip because the Pope has chosen them for his only private audience with a delegation. The meeting is scheduled for Aug. 15 at the McNichols Sports Arena.

“I think he has always had a place in his heart for Vietnamese Catholics because of our past sufferings, and has longed to visit Vietnam but still can’t,” said the Rev. Peter Tuyen Nguyen, one of four Vietnamese priests from Orange County going to World Youth Day.

“So he has chosen this opportunity to make it up to us, to express his concern for us,” said Nguyen, 39, who is not related to Cathy Nguyen.

Though the teen-age girl is realistic she will not have a chance to be within touching distance of the Pope, much less talk with him, she knows what she would ask if she had a chance.

“How can I help most of the Vietnamese youths to understand their parents’ point of view to not join gangs?” Cathy Nguyen said. “Their number is growing, their future totally lost. Many are Catholics and go to church, but only to please their parents. They’re nice at church and at home. But when they’re on the streets, they’re different people.”

Her delegation--filling 19 buses--will leave for Denver Aug. 9.

Among the other Catholics also going to the conference are 20 youths from the Holy Family Catholic Church in Orange. They will leave Aug. 10 by plane.

“It’s not a vacation, it’s a pilgrimage,” said church member Christy O’Connell, 17, of Tustin. “We’re not bringing a lot of things because Jesus didn’t have a lot.”

There will be a lot of energy on the flight because the group is so excited about seeing the Pope, said Adam Montano, a fellow church member.

“Everyone just says that all we’re going to see of the Pope is a white dot out of a crowd of people and that we might not even see him wave,” said Montano, 17, of Orange. “We’ll have to sit through a Mass that a lot of people say is going to be long and boring. But I see the purpose is being a community of youth from around the world getting together. It’s a growing experience, something we’ll remember the rest of our lives.”

Cathy Nguyen sees World Youth Day as an event that will teach her about how other cultures worship, and a chance to share aspects of her Vietnamese heritage with others.

For the past several weeks, she and 15 other teens from the Vietnamese Youth Center in Santa Ana have been practicing a dance to the Christian song, “I Gave My Heart To You.” They will perform it for other parishes at the celebration.

Cathy Nguyen was born in Santa Ana and said she does not know a lot about her Vietnamese background. She knew that Catholicism was brought to the Southeast Asian nation by French missionaries, but did not know that 96 Vietnamese priests and laity were canonized as saints in 1988.

If Vietnamese youth living outside Vietnam knew about those martyrs and other heroes in Vietnamese history, the Rev. Nguyen said, “they would be proud of their heritage and have more self-esteem.”

He said he will join the youths on their bus caravan to Denver.

“We are so lucky that we don’t have to travel to Rome to see the Pope,” said the Rev. Nguyen, one of two Vietnamese priests at St. Barbara’s Catholic Church in Santa Ana. “It’s like a dream coming true.”

The last time the Pope was in the United States was in 1987.

Orange County has 12 Vietnamese Catholic congregations, the Rev. Nguyen said. Catholicism was introduced to Vietnam in the 18th Century. At first, the Vatican did not want Vietnamese converts to continue practicing their tradition of worshiping ancestors, he said. Eventually, Vatican officials understood the practice to be of cultural value and allowed it.

Bao Duong, 32, a member of the Orange County World Youth Day planning committee, said that so many Vietnamese people wanted to go to the event that he had to turn some away.

“I had people who were more than 80 years old coming to me, and I had to say, ‘No.’ ”