Catholic World News News Feature

Hanoi: Police disrupt Catholic procession, 20 hospitalized September 01, 2008

At least 20 Vietnamese Catholics were hospitalized on August 31 after police in Hanoi disrupted a religious procession at an embattled Redemptorist monastery, spraying a priest, altar boys, and lay people with tear gas at close range.

The Sunday-night police raid was the latest in a series of confrontations at the site of the Redemptorist monastery, where Catholic activists have been protesting the government's seizure of Church-owned property.

In Catholic churches around Hanoi, priests had read a statement at every Sunday Mass, asking the government "not to use any sort of violence against the Catholic faithful to settle the dispute," and pleaded with the state-run media "not to distort the truth and falsely accuse Catholic priests and faithful." Earlier the Redemptorist order in Hanoi had decried the "tidal wave of one-way information" furnished by the media, which did not take into account the religious order's legal claims to the disputed property.

In Ho Chi Minh city, Cardinal Jean Baptise Pham Minh Man, issued a pastoral letter complaining that the way the state media, in their coverage of property disputes involving the Church, only “serve the privileges of the powerful, and of parties, not the common good of the nation.” The cardinal confirmed that Redemptorists have all necessary documents and witnesses to prove that the Hanoi property belonged to the religious order.