Vatican urges faithful to revive efforts for sainthood cause of Cardinal Van Thuan
Then-Archbishop Van
Thuan meets St. Teresa of Calcutta during her first visit to Vietnam as mother
superior of the Missionaries in Charity in 1991. | Credit: Photo courtesy of
Elisabeth Nguyen
By Hannah
Brockaus
Vatican City, Sep 21, 2025 / 06:00 am
The beatification cause of Venerable Francis-Xavier Nguyen
Van Thuan is receiving renewed attention from the Vatican 50 years after he was
first imprisoned by the communist government of Vietnam, according to the
cardinal’s sister.
Elisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, Van Thuan’s youngest sister
and last living sibling, told CNA that the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints
is encouraging Catholics to revive their efforts toward the cause as it
launches a
new webpage devoted to the Vietnamese cardinal, whose meditations
on hope and forgiveness have inspired Catholics for decades.
The next stage in the canonization process “is up to the
faithful … to pray to God through the intercession of the cardinal to get an
approved miracle,” Nguyen said during a visit to Rome this week.
Cardinal Van Thuan
poses with members of his family, including siblings, nieces, and nephews,
during the consistory to make him a cardinal in Rome in 2001. His youngest
sister, Elisabeth Nguyen, is pictured on the bottom right. Credit: Photo
courtesy of Elisabeth Nguyen
An official at the dicastery for saints confirmed to CNA the
department is working on Van Thuan’s cause and reiterated the importance of a
verified miracle for the process to proceed.
Van Thuan — declared venerable, the step before
beatification, in 2017 — was a prisoner of the communist government of Vietnam
for 13 years, spending nine of those in solitary confinement. His spiritual
messages, smuggled out during his imprisonment, were collected and published in
the book “The Road of Hope: A Gospel from Prison.”
After he was freed, Van Thuan was forced to leave his home
country, spending his final years in Rome where he served at the Vatican’s
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. In 2001, Pope John Paul II made Van
Thuan a cardinal.
Van Thuan was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer soon
after, but four months before his death on Sept. 16, 2002, he made a final
visit to Australia to see his family for his mother’s 100th birthday.
Cardinal Van Thuan
visits his family in Sydney, Australia, for the 100th birthday of his mother
(seated) in April 2002, a few months before his death in Rome from stomach
cancer on Sept. 16, 2002. Credit: Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Nguyen
Witness of hope in God
Nguyen, the youngest of Van Thuan’s nine siblings, has
written about her brother’s witness in the book “Cardinal
Nguyen Van Thuan: Man of Joy and Hope,” coauthored by Father Stefaan
Lecleir and published by Ignatius Press in April.
After writing the book, Nguyen said she was glad to
contribute to the glory of God through sharing her brother’s life: “Especially
in these recent times in our society when there’s so much anger and not
accepting to forgive … I decided to write with Father Lecleir about the fact
that [Van Thuan’s] message is really to forgive and hope in God through God’s
love.”
Nguyen attended a Mass at her brother’s tomb at the Basilica
of Santa Maria della Scala in Rome on Sept. 16, the anniversary of his death.
The Mass also marked 50 years since his arrest and his composition of the
spiritual messages that became “The Road of Hope” — immortalized in a
newly-discovered photo of the Vietnamese cardinal from 1975.
A photo of Van Thuan
recently found in Vietnam shows the archbishop writing at a table when he was
under house arrest in 1975. Credit: Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Nguyen
The photo, which shows Van Thuan writing at a table in 1975,
was taken by a man who served at the house where the bishop was under house
arrest in communist Vietnam. A friend of Nguyen found it hanging on a family’s
kitchen wall in Vietnam.
‘A mini dad’
Nguyen, who was a baby when Van Thuan was ordained a priest,
said for her he was “more than a brother; he was like a mini dad.”
She shared some of her memories of her older brother,
including the influence his clandestine letters had on her life and faith journey.
“For a long time, I never wanted to write [about Van Thuan]
because it’s going back to some darker times,” Nguyen said.
She described Van Thuan as a very attentive son and sibling
who always made time to visit his family or to write during his long
imprisonment and subsequent exile.
Following the Vietnam War and the North Vietnamese Army’s
invasion of South Vietnam, Van Thuan’s parents and most of his siblings fled to
Australia, Canada, and the U.S.
In a postcard he sent to his parents in Australia in 1982,
Van Thuan wrote to inform them of the recent death of two of their relatives in
Vietnam. He added: “I am in good health. I pray for you and mom each day. This
year, our village, Phú Cam, celebrates 300 years of becoming a Catholic
village. Let’s pray a lot for each other.”
A postcard Van Thuan
sent to his parents in 1982. Credit: Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Nguyen
As a young man, Van Thuan would help watch over his baby
sister, Elisabeth. As she grew up, she cared for his pet guinea pigs and birds.
Nguyen recalled the loving guidance her priest-brother gave during her school
years.
‘Are you happy?’
Growing up during the Vietnam War made Nguyen cynical about
the goodness of God, she said, and in her young adulthood, she “turned away
from the Church because I said, ‘God is love, but look at all of this atrocity
and death in the family, and the whole country is really in pieces.’”
But her older brother, more than two decades her senior, was
instrumental in her return to belief in the Catholic faith, she explained —
starting with when she was finishing her master’s degree in philosophy at
Sydney University in Australia in 1974.
Her master’s thesis was on the existentialist philosophers,
such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Van Thuan read the thesis to give
her feedback, at her request. Because he was visiting Australia for a meeting
with bishops, they had a chance to meet to discuss it.
“He said, ‘So you found the way for life now? Are you
happy?’” Nguyen recalled. “And I burst out crying, because I said, ‘No, I’m
not.’ I said, ‘I’m still searching, but what am I going to do now? I’m done
with the thesis, I can’t go back now.’ He said, ‘No, professors accept freedom
of thought. You can go and tell them, ‘I thought I really believed in this, but
now that I’ve written it, did all the research, I’m not happy.’”
“He never condemned me or was judgmental,” she noted.
The following year, the Vatican named Van Thuan, already the
bishop of Nha Trang for eight years, archbishop coadjutor of what was then
known as Saigon. Shortly afterward, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army
and in August, Van Thuan was arrested by the communist government.
In 1979, he was transferred from a reeducation camp to house
arrest, which is when he began to write messages on the back of page-a-day
calendar leaves and sneak them out through a local boy, Nguyen told CNA.
Nguyen was captivated by the strength of faith she
encountered in her brother’s letters. He “wrote a meditation on the logic of
the cross, and that really, really [moved] me,” she said.
She was struck that he seemed to have met Jesus so deeply.
“I need to find out what that’s like, to be able to meet God like him,” she
thought. “That’s the one who changed my diapers, that’s the one who took me to
the candy store.”
[Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency’s senior Vatican
correspondent. After growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, she earned a degree in
English from Truman State University in Missouri. In 2016, she moved to Rome,
Italy, where in her spare time she enjoys reading and going on adventures with
her husband and son.]
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