Our Lady of the Holy Rosary             Vietnamese CATHOLIC Community

Our Lady of Holy the Rosary Vietnamese
Catholic Community

Mass is celebrated twice per month on Sunday at
4:00 pm at St. Andrew the Apostle Church 
1 Fallons Lane, London ON N5V 5C1

See Mass Dates for the schedule
 

History of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary
Vietnamese Catholic Community

In July 1986, Father Thomas De Nguyen-Dang, then stationed in Windsor, starting coming to London to celebrate Mass with the area’s Catholic Vietnamese community.  At first there were approximately fifteen families and Mass was celebrated in either London or St Thomas.  Permission was granted the following year to have a Mass once a month in the Lady Chapel at St. Peter’s cathedral. Through the efforts of Father De Nguyen-Dang and Dinh Nguyen, the first president of the Vietnamese Catholic Community (1986-92), the congregation swelled to as many as sixty to seventy families. In July 1992, Father De Nguyen-Dang left for further studies in Rome and was replaced by Father T. Francis Tran, CSJB, as pastor of the Vietnamese community of the diocese. He was stationed in Windsor.

In 1995, the local community moved to Blessed Sacrament church where Mass was celebrated twice a month.  Of late, Mass has been celebrated only once a month on Saturday afternoon.  Blessed Sacrament’s connection with the Vietnamese community dates to 28 August 1979, when a Vietnamese refugee fund was established in the parish. Among the fifteen refugees sponsored by the parish in 1980, three were Catholic.

It was customary during the Easter season for the Vietnamese priests from other jurisdictions to celebrate Mass with the London community and conduct a special retreat.  In addition to the specific liturgical celebrations of the Church during the year, the community gives particular place to its Vietnamese New Year’s Mass, toward the end of January or the beginning of February, and to Masses on 1 October in honour of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, on 7 October to venerate Our Lady of the Rosary and on 24 November in memory of the 117 Vietnamese martyrs.  This latter feast day commemorates St. André Dung Lac and Companions, who represent the hundreds of thousands of Christians who died for the faith in what is now Vietnam, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and who were canonized by Pope John Paul II on 19 June 1988.  Until the closing of Blessed Sacrament Church, the statues of St. André and Our Lady of Vietnam stood just inside the main entrance door.

The community’s choir is named after St. Theresa of the Child Jesus.  This group, comprised of both adults and young people, was founded on October 1994 and also performs flower dances in May, in honour of Our Blessed Lady, and in October, in honour of St. Theresa.  It also performs traditional dances and conducts children’s fashion shows and skits on Christmas and New Year’s Day.  Each June, London’s congregation joins with other Vietnamese in southern Ontario and from the United States to take part in a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Canadian Martyrs in Midland and, in September to Our Lady of Fatima Shrine in Buffalo, New York. Each summer, in either July or August, the London congregation gathers for a communal picnic, which sometimes takes place in St. Thomas or Chatham.
When Father Tran is unavailable, Bishop Sherlock celebrates Mass with the Vietnamese community.  As in the early years in this diocese, when the visits of a priest were both irregular and infrequent, the Catholic Vietnamese community holds a prayer session at the home of one of its members on alternate Saturday afternoons.  Families are contacted when it is known that a priest will be available for Saturday afternoon Mass.  The last Mass at Blessed Sacrament was celebrated on 3 June 2006 and was attended by approximately fifteen families.  With the closure of the church in July, St. Patrick’s Church on Dundas Street became the spiritual home of the Vietnamese Catholic community.

Presently, the congregation has some twenty to thirty families.  Several reasons are given for this.  The time of Mass is inconvenient for those who work Saturday afternoons, often the Saturday on which the Mass is scheduled to be celebrated gets changed, and many families are now involved in their local churches.  It is hoped that the reorganization at St. Patrick’s will increase the numbers.

Sources: Information provided by Hoa Tran, Father John Van Damme and Peter Khong.

Note: The spiritual home of the Vietnamese Catholic community is now St. Andrew the Apostle Church.