Vietnamese Cardinal Van Thuan on road to sainthood
(July 03, 2013) The late Vietnamese cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan will
take a major step on the road to sainthood on Friday with the official closing of
the diocesan phase of his beatification process. The 3-day ceremony will be held
in Rome's Lateran Palace that will include a meeting with Pope Francis . Around 500
Vietnamese – friends, relatives and former colleagues of the cardinal are in Rome
for the event, according to Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, president of the
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Cardinal Van Thuan spent 13 years in
prison, nine of them in solitary confinement in Hanoi, following his appointment as
coadjutor archbishop of Saigon just seven days before South Vietnam fell to the Communist
North in 1975. “We already have several reports of alleged miracles,” said Waldery
Hilgerman, the cause's postulator, during a press conference in Rome on Tuesday. “Now
we will be more free to work with doctors and experts and check whether these facts
are truly unexplainable.” Over 10,000 pages of documentation and never before
published writings by Van Thuan have been gathered during the two year-long process.
Vatican officials also heard dozen of witnesses who had known the cardinal personally
in order to prove that he practiced Christian virtues to a “heroic degree.” A planned
trip to Vietnam to hear more witnesses was cancelled at the last minute in March 2012
by the Hanoi government. Instead, officials collected 26 written accounts from people
living in Vietnam.The case now goes before the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes
of Saints, where the files will be examined and finally voted on by cardinals and
bishops before being submitted to the pope. Once “heroic virtues” have been recognized,
beatification can occur if it is proved that a “miracle,” such as a scientifically
unexplainable healing, happened through the cardinal's intercession. As part of the
process the cardinal's tomb has been moved to the Roman church of Santa Maria della
Scala for easier access to pilgrims, Hilgerman announced. The beatification cause
of Cardinal Van Thuan was promoted by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
where the Vietnamese cardinal was president from 1998 until his death in 2002.