Joachim Pham

Hundreds of sisters from various congregations in Vietnam volunteered to provide material and emotional support for tens of thousands of pilgrims at a Marian shrine.

Congregations in Hue, Vietnam, organized recent gatherings to promote religious vocations among young women. Sisters told how they followed religious vocations versus other ways of life. They shared more details with GSR.

Most sisters, novices and postulants from the convents and communities of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary of Bui Chu have been infected with COVID-19, since the pandemic hit their motherhouse in January.

Approximately 1,000 people so far have been treated without charge at this branch of the Kim Long Charity Clinic, which opened with 200 beds in December 2021 to treat local COVID-19 patients.

In Vietnam, the group Thap Sang Hy Vong creates opportunities for women who have had abortions to reconcile themselves with their unborn children, experience divine mercy and build up a civilization of love and culture of life.

In Vietnam, "Crèches are absolutely indispensable to local Catholic families in the Christmas season as they bind the material and spiritual worlds together," Sr. Anna Vo Thi Ngoi Khen said. Sisters and young Catholics have made crèches for families challenged by COVID-19 and recent floods.

As students' parents have been left unemployed by the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam, Catholic nuns have stepped in to provide help with fees, computer access, textbooks, uniforms, school supplies, bicycles and more.

As the delta variant spreads in Vietnam, sisters in heavily affected areas have moved some of their ministries online or now run them over the phone to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

In Ho Chi Minh City and two provinces in Vietnam badly hit by COVID-19's delta variant, hundreds of women and men religious have voluntarily joined front-line forces to take care of patients at understaffed hospitals.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is a chance to share what we have with our brothers and sisters in need," explains one of the many Vietnamese sisters whose congregations are providing free food for people under quarantine.

St. Paul de Chartres sisters and other Catholic nuns in Vietnam care for TB patients at public hospitals, show them how to take medicine and get follow-up medical examinations, and offer them basic food and money.

Photo essay - Sisters in Vietnam's central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue return home to welcome the new year, visit relatives and friends, and bring Christian values to others during their nine-day holiday.

Ahead of the Lunar New Year, congregations of women religious across Vietnam have stepped in to help people who lost homes and livelihoods in severe flooding that hit the central provinces in October and November.

Nuns from four congregations in Vietnam's central provinces that are being hit by the worst floods in decades are providing emergency aid for hundreds of thousands of victims.

Catholicism is seen as a foreign religion in Vietnam, with 52,000 followers among the total population of 1.3 million, according to church statistics. Three sisters who have their origins in other religions recently talked with Global Sisters Report about their admiration for what sisters have done for them and others.

Since the pandemic hit Vietnam in February, the country's 97 million people have been experiencing a severe economic downturn. People living in isolated areas or who worked day to day are hit hardest.

In Vietnam, cultural change and family crises are leaving more elderly people abandoned and living in poverty on the streets. In Da Nang, Elderly Loving Home offers refuge to elderly women.

Answering a call from the Hue archbishop, Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception and volunteers visited pagodas to bring gifts and good wishes for the Buddhist holiday, quiet this year because of COVID-19.

Fr. Thomas Vu Quang Trung, who was executive secretary of the Vietnamese bishops' Committee on Consecrated Life for nine years, talks with GSR about sisters' ministries and challenges in the local church.

Dominican Sisters of St. Rose of Lima started their ministries in Gia Lai Province in 2005. Now, 26 nuns from five communities provide pastoral, educational and health care services for ethnic villagers.