A papal visit to Vietnam would send a very good message to the Asian region, said Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican's foreign minister.
"There's a few further steps to be taken before (a papal trip) would be appropriate," he said, expressing optimism
Vietnam will allow a papal representative to reside in the country and open an office there to support Vietnam's estimated 6.5 million Catholics in a sign of the country's improved relations with the Holy See.
A Vatican delegation traveled to Vietnam, hoping to accelerate a process for enhancing diplomatic ties between the Holy See and Vietnam.
On April 20, the three-member delegation, led by Msgr. Miroslaw Wachowski, the Vatican's undersecretary for relations with states, arrived in Hanoi to
Nguyen Duy Phuong, a 12th-grader, thought he could not afford to go to school this year. His father, who used to work as a day wage earner in Ho Chi Minh City and became jobless during the delta variant phase of the
Catholicism was first introduced to Vietnam by European missionaries in 1533. Despite periods of intense persecution, a significant portion of the population took to the Catholic faith. Today, 7 percent of the country is Catholic, with another 500,000 Vietnamese Catholics relocating to