Notre Dame: The church at the heart of Southern Vietnam

By CHRISTINA I. HERMOSO

Notre Dame Cathedral exterior

HO CHI MINH, Vietnam – Finding a Catholic church in downtown Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon) was indeed a pleasant surprise in a country where the known dominant religion is Mahayana Buddhism.

The Notre Dame Cathedral or Notre Dame Basilica, an old imposing structure with a height of 60.5 meters,  is also one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions for its beautiful neo-Romanesque style architecture.

All the building materials used to construct the church were said to be imported from France, including the exterior wall of bright red bricks that were shipped directly from Marseille.

According to Vo Phan Cong, our English-speaking tourist guide, himself a Roman Catholic, the cathedral is a favorite venue for weddings, as well as for photo and video shoots even by non-Catholics.

From Monday to Saturday, masses are held at 9 a.m. in English and at 4:30 p.m. in Vietnamese. On Sundays, masses are celebrated at 6 a.m., 9 a.m., 4 p.m., and 6 p.m.

A huge statue of the Blessed Mother stands at the front yard and is known to the locals as the Queen of Peace. “We come here any day to venerate her and pay tribute to her,” Cong said.

Formerly known as the State Cathedral, the church structure took three years to finish, beginning on Oct. 7, 1877 after Bishop Isidore Colombert laid the first stone in an inaugural ceremony. The blessing rites and ceremony of completion was held on an Easter Sunday, on April 11, 1880.

The church has two bell towers reaching a height of 58 meters (190 feet) and weighing 28.85 metric tons that were added in 1895. Crosses were installed on top of each tower with a height of 3.5 meters.

In 1959, Bishop Joseph Pham Van Thien, whose jurisdiction included Saigon parish, attended the Holy Mother Congress at the Vatican. While there, he ordered a Peaceful Notre Dame statue made of granite in Rome, Italy. The statue of the Virgin Mary arrived in Saigon on Feb. 16, 1959 and was immediately installed, and presented with the title “Regina Pacis.”

The Vietnamese prelate wrote the prayer “Notre Dame bless the peace to Vietnam.”

Vietnam has the fifth largest Catholic population in Asia, next to the Philippines, India, China, and Indonesia. According to the Catholic Hierarchy Catalog, there are about 5,658,000 Catholics in Vietnam, accounting for about 6.87 percent of the country’s total population.

There are 26 dioceses on record, including three archdioceses with 2,228 parishes and 2,668 priests.

In 1988, Pope John Paul II canonized all the Vietnamese Catholics who had died for their faith from 1533 as Vietnamese martyrs
.