|
He has written
hundreds of songs enjoyed by people all over the world, but Fr Paul Van Chi is no pop star. He is a brave man who now serves the Vietnamese Catholic community, but his life’s journey has been a hard one so far.
CHRIS HOOK reports
Fr Paul Van Chi’s (pictured) engaging manner and energy belie the physical trauma he has suffered. He spent four years in a Vietnamese prison, which resulted in
two-thirds of his stomach being removed and a nerve ending in his head was also cut. But for Fr Paul, prison was a kind of gift.
“I think of it like a long retreat God sent (me on) as a favour,” he explains.
“I understand more about sacrifice, and I understand about charity and helping others, so it makes me stronger in my faith.”
Fr Paul first incurred the displeasure of Vietnam’s Communist Government in 1984
for, among other ‘crimes’, building his church “too quickly”.
He had permission to build a church – just not too quickly. Such is the nature of Communist persecution in Vietnam.
But, even worse than
this, the then parish priest found his own parishioners were expected to condemn him.
“The Government forced my parishioners to gather together, like a public trial. (They were supposed) to accuse me, (and
say),‘he did this wrong, he did that wrong’,” recalls Fr Paul.
“They thought my parishioners would condemn me, but none would. Most of them cried (out that) they could not believe it. (So) the Government
thought, ‘Well, we did something wrong with this one’. It wasn’t successful so they stopped it.”
Nonetheless, Fr Paul still found himself dispatched to a high security prison in Hanoi where he occupied a
single cell just 70 centimetres wide and barely 1.8 metres long.
His crime was nine “violations” that included four charges relating to teaching music, conducting a choir and writing hymns, as well as
building his church “too quickly”.
Once in prison he found he was far from alone. He found there were many other unrepentant Catholics who were also unwilling to denounce their Church or betray their faith.
Although Vietnam’s communists pay lip service to religious freedom, they have made life difficult for Buddhists and Christians alike.
Fr Paul was impressed by the faith of his fellow Catholic
prisoners and sought to comfort them by saying Mass.
“In the prison I could say Mass secretly at midnight.”
“My vestments … were nothing! I was nude with just my shorts (on) and I said Mass with a
button. We put the host there and the wine we put in a diarrhoea medicine bottle and wrote on it ‘medicine for diarrhoea, very dangerous’, so the communist police didn’t know it was altar wine that my family and
friends had sent to me.
“So we used that to say Mass at midnight and many people received communion but secretly. Because of that many survived.”
The inmates would use holes in their cell doors to pass
communion among themselves, a source of comfort to them all, even those who were under sentence of death.
“All of them, they told the police, ‘I am Catholic and I cannot betray the Catholic Church’. Even when
I actually witnessed cases where they put them to death, they still said that, and they shouted, ‘Alleluia, Jesus Christ, alleluia’. A very strong faith. It touched my heart. They were very brave to go for
execution, to be shot.”
Although originally sentenced to nine years imprisonment, the severity of prison life soon took its toll on Fr Paul’s health. Lack of exercise, sunlight and food saw the priest’s light
55-kilogram frame waste away to just 34 kilograms. Eventually Fr Paul was unable to walk because, he says simply, “they tortured too much”.
After almost two years in the narrow confines of the Hanoi prison it
was decided that Fr Paul should be transferred to a re- education camp in the isolated forests in Vietnam’s south. There, despite his ill health, he was forced to work with grave consequences.
Those running
the camp eventually became convinced Fr Paul was close to death after his stomach haemorrhaged 12 times. A grave was chosen, but Fr Paul’s trust in God paid off and he was released so he could die outside prison.
Then, after some time in hospital, he decided to try and escape Vietnam. Like many of his countrymen, he did so by finding passage on a small boat.
He was with 70 others on the boat and was lucky to survive.
“It was very dangerous. It was very small, like a leaf on the ocean. About 90 per cent died, just ten per cent survived,” said Fr Paul.
The boat made it to the Philippines and Fr Paul began working
among the Vietnamese refugees. He saw many people die trying to leave Vietnam, he said. His experience is underscored by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which estimates that about 400,000 Vietnamese
people died trying to leave the country, including 100,000 children.
Fr Paul recalls one boat arriving that had seen 150 people die. Just one person survived.
Eventually, Fr Paul migrated to Australia
in 1989. He was sponsored by Cardinal Clancy.
It has been a long and arduous journey for Fr Paul, whose first experience fleeing persecution occurred in 1954 when he was just five years old. The communists
had occupied north Vietnam, so his family fled to the south.
For a time life was good in the south. Fr Paul entered a minor seminary as a teenager, began to study music and found his musical ‘voice’. He wrote
sacred music prolifically from about 1965 and published his first collection of hymns in 1971.
But then, in 1975, the south of the country fell to the communists and life changed dramatically. He was now a
parish priest, but this did not excuse him from the work detail all were assigned under the Communist Government’s collectivisation policy.
Fr Paul would work all day and then write his music at night, using
the pain from his physical labours as a kind of redemptive suffering and creative inspiration.
Between 1975 and his imprisonment in 1984, he wrote around 600 songs.
He observes that his (now
enormous) collection of work in a sense mirrors the journey of his people.
“The songs of mine follow the history of my country. Before 1975, they are very peaceful, very joyful songs. Then, after 1975, oh,
so sad. There are lots of prayerful songs, prayer when working (and) when we find difficulties. Here (in Australia) they are different, (they are) thanking and trusting songs, prayerful to guide us in a new way.”
Fr Paul is now chaplain – with five other priests – to the extensive NSW Vietnamese Catholic community. There are about 15,000 Vietnamese Catholics in the state and the chaplains visit the various local
communities to celebrate Mass in Vietnamese.
He has also continued to work on his music and recently completed a Masters degree in music in California. This has opened up new means of expression, he says, and
he has been writing music bringing together occidental and oriental instruments.
In spite of the pain of his life’s journey – he was not even allowed to see his mother while in prison, despite her requests,
and she died without seeing her son again – Fr Paul is profoundly joyful. He speaks warmly of his contact with young people here and in Europe and the United States. They have invariably been touched by his story
and had their faith strengthened.
Fr Paul also continues to write and record music, and to conduct choirs. He put together the 200-voice choir for last November’s Jubilee ‘Celebration of Our Faith in Song’
held at St Mary’s Cathedral to commemorate the end of the Jubilee year.
He is optimistic in the way of a man who knows his people are still not free to worship and who therefore knows there is still much to
do, but he is alive while many of Vietnam’s seven million Catholics still suffer persecution. A recent crackdown has seen many Christians and Buddhists jailed.
The battle for religious freedom in Vietnam goes on.
|
