Pope Francis has signed a decree declaring Vietnamese Cardinal François Nguyen Van Thuan as Venerable.
The decree confirms that Cardinal Van Thuan – who spent 13 years in jail, nine of which were in solitary confinement – lived a life of heroic virtue.
During those years he clandestinely ordained priests, distributed Communion to Catholic prisoners, and converted atheists and Buddhists. He became so effective at evangelising his prison guards that the authorities had to keep changing them round, according to the Telegraph.
Vietnam’s communist regime jailed Van Thuan, who was born in 1928, in 1975, when he was the newly named coadjutor bishop of Saigon, later renamed Ho Chi Minh City. He was never tried or sentenced. His uncle was South Vietnam’s first president, Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic who was assassinated in 1963.
After his release, Van Thuan was placed under house arrest before being exiled to Australia, where he had family. From 1998 until his death in 2002 he served as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
Last year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, named the cardinal as a personal hero. He told the Spectator: “He led his torturers to Christ. He converted, taught and ordained priests in prison. He breathed in the presence of Christ.”
Pope Francis also advanced the Cause of the American Capuchin Fr Solanus Casey, recognising a miracle attributed to his intercession. Fr Casey (1870-1957) gained a popular following during his lifetime, with healings attributed to his intercession both before and after his death.
He was the sixth of 16 children of Irish immigrant parents. He was born on a farm in Wisconsin and worked as a logger, a hospital orderly, a streetcar operator and prison guard before entering the Capuchins aged 26.
He was ordained in 1904 as a “simplex priest”, one who is unable to hear Confessions or preach sermons, because he had not performed well in his studies. He carried out humble tasks in the monastery and, while serving in Yonkers, New York, was assigned to be the friary’s porter, or doorkeeper, a ministry he would carry out for the rest of his life. He was declared Venerable in 1995.
In his decree last week Pope Francis also recognised the martyrdom of Lucien Botovasoa, a married man with eight children as well as a Third Order Franciscan and teacher in Vohipeno, Madagascar. Botovasoa was blacklisted as an enemy of Madagascan independence and was killed in 1947 out of hatred of the faith.
Years later a village elder admitted on his deathbed to a local missionary that he ordered the murder, even though Botovasoa had told him he would be by his side to help him whenever he was in need. The elder told the missionary that he felt Botovasoa’s presence, and asked to be baptised.
New Swiss Guards sworn in
Forty new Swiss Guards were sworn in at the Vatican last Saturday.
They took their oaths in a ceremony at the Apostolic Palace on the anniversary of the day in 1527 when 147 Guards died protecting Pope Clement VII during the Sack of Rome. Pope Francis told the new Guards, who must be single, upstanding Swiss Catholic males younger than 30, that they are called to “another sacrifice no less arduous”, serving the power of faith.
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