Cardinal Van Thuan's sister went to confession—and there he was on the other side!

– Courtney Mares, OSV News, Rome

More than seven decades after the event, as the Catholic Church commemorates the 24th anniversary of the Vietnamese cardinal’s death on September 16, that unexpected encounter remains one of the most cherished memories of his younger sister, Élisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, and one that forever changed the way she approaches the sacrament of confession.

“I didn’t know he was behind the confessional, so I went to confess, and it was him,” said Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, who is 22 years younger than her brother, in an interview with OSV News earlier this year. Recognizing his voice, she asked him if he planned to tell their parents what she had confessed to him.

“When I’m behind this with my stole, I am Jesus”

Élisabeth said she will never forget the response of the then-Father Van Thuan: “When I’m standing here with my stole, I am Jesus. So you can tell Jesus anything you want.”.

“That was my most beautiful moment with him,” she said.

He promised to pray for his brother when he was ordained a priest

She also recalled an earlier moment, before her brother’s ordination, when he used to look after her as a child. As they walked together through a garden, he told her that he would soon be ordained a priest and asked her what she could do to help him be a good priest. She promised to pray for him. At the time, she had no idea how much her brother would need those prayers in the decades to come.

13 years in prison without a trial or sentence

The Cardinal Van Thuan, venerated by the Catholic Church and in the process of canonization, is known for having heroically endured 13 years of imprisonment under Vietnam's communist government. 

He was arrested on August 15, 1975, four months after Pope Paul VI appointed him coadjutor archbishop of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. He was detained without trial or sentence, spending nine years in solitary confinement and four more in re-education camps.

While in prison, he celebrated Mass in secret, using contraband communion wafers and wine that was sent to him in small bottles labeled “medicine for stomach pain.”. 

He wrote brief spiritual reflections on scraps of paper that were copied by hand and distributed among Vietnamese Catholics; these texts were later compiled into the book *The Path of Hope*.

The second of nine children

Born on April 17, 1928, in Phú Cam, in the Archdiocese of Hue, Van Thuan was the second of nine children in a family with a long tradition of Christian martyrs. In 1967, he became the first Vietnamese bishop of Nha Trang. 

After his release from prison in 1988, he was expelled from Vietnam in 1991 and settled in Rome. He later served on the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, becoming its president in 1998, and was appointed cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2001. He died in Rome on September 16, 2002, after a long battle with cancer. Pope Francis declared him Venerable in 2017.

In a press release On the occasion of the 24th anniversary of his death, on September 16, the postulators overseeing the cause for the canonization of Cardinal Van Thuan stated that the date “invites us to recognize how his witness continues to be relevant to the Church and to today’s world.”.

He clung to hope

“Cardinal Van Thuan did not merely speak of hope: he clung to it when, humanly speaking, all seemed lost,” said the postulators, adding that his life demonstrates that “history can truly change when even a single person takes the Gospel and the dignity of all people seriously.”.

The team of candidates—Waldery Hilgeman, Paolo Daviè, Claudia Di Lorenzi, Father Hubertus Blaumeiser, and Maria do Sameiro Freitas—also celebrated the fact that Pope Leo XIV quoted Cardinal Van Thuan in his encyclical “Magnifica humanitas” this year, including him among the witnesses who embodied “the hope of the Gospel and the dignity of the human person” under difficult circumstances.

Cardinal Van Thuan is known to later generations through his books, which include “Five Loaves and Two Fish,” “Prayers of Hope, Words of Courage,” and “The Way of Hope: A Gospel from Prison.”.

50th Anniversary of the Book ‘The Path of Hope’

His postulators also celebrated the fact that a biography of the cardinal written by his sister—presented in Rome in March at a conference titled “François-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan: Witness to Hope”—also commemorated the 50th anniversary of the publication of *The Way of Hope*.

Several cardinals who knew Van Thuan shared their memories at that conference. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle recalled being extremely nervous while delivering a speech to Asian bishops in the Philippines in 1995, after which Cardinal Van Thuan encouraged him.

Cardinal Tagle: “There was no trace of bitterness or hatred in him”

“The bishop said, ‘I am Archbishop Francisco Javier Nguyen of Vietnam, currently serving at the Vatican.’ ”I felt as if I’d been struck by lightning. He was the person I’d heard so much about. Now he was standing right in front of me, comforting me, reassuring me, and giving me strength,” Cardinal Tagle recalled.

“We sat down. He told me his story. It was in the afternoon. I was struck by the fact that, even as he recalled painful and even humiliating experiences, his voice remained calm and his face serene. There was not a trace of bitterness or hatred in him,” he added.

He supported the Vietnamese refugees “all over the world”

Cardinal Michael Czerny, Prefect Emeritus of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, recalled how Cardinal Van Thuan spent his early years in Rome doing “impressive work in support of Vietnamese refugees around the world, both on a human and spiritual level, promoting an international aid network and a wide range of initiatives.”.

South Korean Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik, prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy, who knew Cardinal Van Thuan personally, described him as “a man of great kindness, serenity, and inner freedom” who continued to evangelize even while in prison. He recounted the testimony of one of the cardinal’s former guards, who was later baptized and stated that meeting the future cardinal had been “the most important encounter of my life.”.

“I’m happy here, in this cell, where white mold grows.”

At the March conference, Cardinal Van Thuan’s sister also described how her family, then living as refugees in Sydney, Australia, learned in 1976 that her older brother had been placed in solitary confinement—news that brought her mother to tears. 

During that period of isolation in Phú Khánh Prison, Cardinal Van Thuan wrote, on the Feast of the Holy Rosary: “I am happy here, in this cell, where white mold grows on my mat, because You are here with me, because You want me to live here with You. I have spoken a great deal in my life: now I no longer speak. It is Your turn to speak to me, Jesus; I am listening to You.”.

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Courtney Mares is the Vatican correspondent for OSV News. Follow her on X, @catholiccourtney

This information was originally published in OSV News, and you can read it here.