c. 2000 Religion News Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ Father Joseph Phuong Nguyen is one of the new faces of the Roman Catholic priesthood in North America.

He was persecuted for practicing Christianity in Vietnam. He almost drowned escaping on a boat. He struggled to learn English so he could become a priest.

His giant suburban parish in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, is made up mostly of Italians and Filipinos. He tries to learn from his congregation. They try to learn from him. It seems to be working. He finds it humorous.

Father Phuong, who laughs at a lot of things in life, is part of what Roman Catholic leaders in the United States and Canada are calling a remarkable upsurge in Asians entering the Catholic priesthood.

The head of vocations for the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Rev. Edward Burns, said in an interview from Washington that Asians _ who comprise only 3 percent of the U.S. population _ make up 15 percent of Catholic priests in training at major seminaries.

“It’s astounding,” Burns said.

Nowhere is this trend more dramatic than in Greater Vancouver, where more than half the young men attending Christ the King Seminary have Asian roots.

“It’s quite startling,” says Paul Schratz, communication officer for the Greater Vancouver archdiocese.

No one knows exactly why a rising number of young Asian men are willing to forgo marriage to devote their lives to the church in North America as well as in Asia. Some Catholics speculate the high number of Asian vocations, or calls to religious life, has to do with Asia’s cultural emphasis on loyalty, order and lifelong commitment.

Whatever the reasons, the stream of new priests from Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and elsewhere is desperately needed in North America.

The Roman Catholic Church in Canada has only 9,600 priests, compared to 20,000 in 1968.

Catholic priests are dying in North America about three times faster than they can be replaced. Yet the proportion of Catholics in Canada and the United States remains constant.

More than 14 million Canadians consider themselves Catholics, and two-thirds of them continue to be active in parishes either without priests or with overworked ones. The United States has more than 2,617 parishes without priests. That’s five times higher than in 1975.

In Greater Vancouver, the ethnic shift began in the early 1990s when the predominantly Anglo-Saxon and Irish ordinands at Christ the King Seminary began to be replaced by immigrants from Asia.

As a result, almost three out of four Catholic priests ordained in Greater Vancouver in the past decade have been Asian.

“It’s the new face of the priesthood,” Schratz said.

Vancouver Archbishop Adam Exner attributes the dramatic rise in Asian ordinands in part to the vibrant multiculturalism of Greater Vancouver, where roughly one-third of the population is ethnic Asian.

St. Mary’s parish in east Vancouver, for example, has members from 78 countries.

“I’m excited about this diversity. I think it’s great,” Exner said.

Although a 1997 study by the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops found mandatory celibacy was by far the greatest barrier young Catholics identified to entering the priesthood, Exner said it’s North American young people’s general fear of “making demanding commitments” of any kind that steers them away from ordination.

People rooted in Asian cultures, he suggests, don’t seem to breed the same fear of long-term vows.

Men from Vietnam, where 14 percent of the population is Catholic, are the most likely to want to become priests in Canada. Many Greater Vancouver ordinands also come from the Philippines, where almost everyone is Catholic, but others hail from Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and China _ countries where Catholics make up less than 1 percent of the citizenry.

Exner speculated that Vietnam is producing many potential Catholic priests because Christians there have been persecuted for practicing their faith since the Communist takeover in 1975, following the withdrawal of the U.S. military.

“Persecution has a way of strengthening your resolve in what you believe in,” Exner said. “A good number of the young men I’ve ordained were boat people. They’re open-minded. They have a sense of humor. They’ve been around. They’ve been in refugee camps, and they have learned a marvelous way of adapting.”

Father Phuong says he’s been dreaming of becoming a priest ever since he was a young boy in Vietnam.

“My village was very religious. So was my family. But it wasn’t easy. The Communists did not allow any priests to teach catechism.”

After Phuong was arrested three times for studying at an underground seminary, he tried to escape Vietnam.

“A terrible storm came up and our boat almost sank. We had no hope we could survive,” he says, with a little chuckle.

He laughs frequently, and disarmingly, as he describes his “very, very difficult struggle” to come to Canada, learn English and be ordained in Vancouver in 1997.

The Rev. Justin Trinidad, who was born in the Philippines, believes the celibacy requirement stops many Caucasians from entering the priesthood.

But Trinidad, who gave up his plans to marry and a “good” job as director of an international peace organization to become a priest, also thinks North Americans’ highly individualistic ethos keeps them from giving their lives to a community of believers.

Since the 39-year-old priest of St. Mary’s parish was ordained in 1997 in Vancouver, he’s realized he must focus on helping people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds overcome their ethnocentrism _ “the belief that their culture is the best.”

The 21st century is one in which all people will need to come together and learn from one another, Trinidad said. He thinks many Asians can learn from the North American work ethic, while Caucasians can learn from the Asian stress on family and communitarianism.

For his part, Exner has had to calm the fears of Asian bishops at international Catholic synods when he tells them there are Vancouver parishes containing members hailing from 78 countries.

“They gasp,” Exner says. “They tend to look at that negatively. Some of the Asian bishops would be concerned about their culture losing its purity.”

In contrast, Exner believes Greater Vancouver, with its ethnically mixed population and rising number of Asian priests, has a unique opportunity to build a new “global culture” that blends the best of all worlds.

“You don’t want people to give up their culture completely because that can make them act in a rootless way,” Exner says. “And the temptation to get sucked into the worst of each culture is always there. But here we have the opportunity to take the best from each culture and religion and weave it into something great for the future.”

DEA END TODD