For Catholic church, Vietnamese are the new Irish

If you visit the Divine Word College, a tiny Catholic missionary school outside Dubuque, Iowa, the conversations you hear in its hallways will most likely not be in English. Usually, they are in Vietnamese. So is the music played late at night in the school's cafeteria, when students are hungry for a bite.

Vietnamese dominate this seminary. Forty-three out of its 67 students, about 2 out of 3, are Vietnamese.

"They are replacing the traditional Irish and Italian immigrants, who once provided a steady supply of priests in the States," said Len Uhal, national vocation director and vice president for recruitment. In his office, a map of the United States is covered with colorful thumbtacks representing potential students approached for recruitment. Many of those tacks mark Vietnamese communities. "We look to Asians, particularly Vietnamese immigrants, to fill the quotas."

In the last four decades, the number of priests in the United States has dropped 27 percent, to around 43,000, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. And though Asian Americans comprise of just over 1 percent of the Catholic church in the United States, they account for 12 percent of all Catholic seminary students nationwide. And the majority of those tend to be Vietnamese.

In Orange County, Calif., home to the largest Vietnamese population outside Vietnam, almost 15 percent of the Catholic priests are Vietnamese, a number that is rising. Last year, out of seven priests ordained in the county, three were Vietnamese. And four years ago, Vietnamese overseas celebrated when the Fr. Dominic Luong in Orange County became the first Vietnamese bishop in the United States.

Fr. Binh Nguyen, 39, who attended Divine Word College, is now one of its four recruiters. He travels regularly to Vietnamese communities, talking to potential students. "I rarely fly, because you don't know how long it will take to recruit," he said. "And I rarely stay at hotels. I take my time. I stay at the potential recruit's home, talking to the family, to everybody, making sure they know what the student can expect at Divine Word." Nguyen invites them to Dubuque for a visit.

Lain Tran, 25, a junior, was one of his recruits. When he was younger and living in Vietnam, Lam dreamed of becoming a priest. But "that was nearly impossible in communist Vietnam," he said. "The church remains under heavy regulation and surveillance." His family came to the United States five years ago, when his father was granted political refugee status. At first, Tran didn't pursue his dream of becoming a priest. But soon his uncle told someone who knew Nguyen and Tran found himself visiting Divine Word. That he was living in bustling New York City at the time didn't sway his decision. Nor did his parents' disappointment when their only son decided to become a priest.

"I feel like it was fate," Tran said. "I like the quiet and the busy school schedule. There's no distraction here. Besides, I have many more years before I take the final vow." Seminary school students will have 12 years before taking their vows.

Tran also likes the one-to-four teacher-to-student ratio, almost unheard of in any other college. The school opens its doors to a wide variety of students. There are plenty of grants, and scholarships are available, even to those who didn't fare well in high school.

One is Khoa Mai, 31, who spent much of his formative years in a refugee camp in the Philippines. Mai said he suffered much during his escape in a crowded boat in the late 1980s. At lunch, he spontaneously tells in Vietnamese the story of his ordeal. "I starved on that boat. I was muscular in Vietnam but by the time we landed, I was near dead, just skin and bones." Sixteen people died on his boat, he said. They ran out of food and water after two weeks. If the Belgian ship that rescued them hadn't come when it did, "the next day we would have started eating the dead."

Mai, who spent some years working in a nail salon and then on an assembly line for a high-tech company, will take at least three years of classes in English as a second language before enrolling in serious college-level courses. He worries that he won't be able to master English. Failing English would mean he won't graduate, which means the end of the dream of priesthood. Still, Mai said, "I was lucky. I met Father Bird] while I went camping. He offered a real education with some scholarship. I have a chance now." Students are kicked out each year due to failing grades.

Those who graduate and decide not to follow the path to priesthood will have to pay back a certain amount of their loans, but nowhere as high as that of a regular university. That's an attraction for the education-loving Vietnamese who came to America past school age. "If you miss out on your education," said one student who preferred to remain anonymous, "going to seminary school is your second chance to become somebody." To Vietnamese Catholic families, he said, having a son who is a priest "is a kind of honor that elevates the family's standing in the community, especially for poor families."