Benoît Thuận, the missionary who brought the Cistercians to Vietnam to be raised to the honours of the altars
The diocesan phase of the process of beatification of the French priest who in 1918 established the monastery of Our Lady of Phước Sơn in the Diocese of Huế has ended in Rome. The latter today can count on hundreds of monks in Vietnam.
Rome (AsiaNews) – The closing session of the diocesan phase of the process of beatification of Fr Benoît Thuận (1880-1933) came to an end today in the Lateran Palace.
This is a “moment of celebration for the whole Church” in Rome as well as in Vietnam, said Bishop Baldassare Reina, the vicegerent of the Diocese of Rome.
Born Henri François Denis, the French missionary arrived in Vietnam in 1903 where he founded in 1918 the monastery of Our Lady of Annam in Phước Sơn, Archdiocese of Huế, the country’s first male monastic community.
As required by canon law, the documentation concerning the holiness of this servant of God still highly venerated in Vietnam were sealed and handed over to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, in a ceremony attended by Dom Mauro Giuseppe Lepori, Abbot General of the Cistercian Order, and Dom John XXIII, Abbot President of the Cistercian Congregation of the Holy Family, the branch founded in Vietnam by Fr Benoît Thuận.
A native of Boulogne-sur-Mere (France), Fr Henri François Denis was ordained a priest for the Mission Étrangères de Paris on 7 March 1903. He left for Vietnam a few months later, assigned to the mission in Huế, where he took the name Thuận, which in Vietnamese means obedience.
He adapted to the local culture, interacting with people to serve them, without any air of superiority. Eventually, as he pursued his missionary apostolate, he felt strongly called to bear witness to the Gospel with a monastic style.
Thus, in 1918, with the support of his bishop and the permission of Propaganda Fide, he set up the monastery of Our Lady of Annam amid extreme poverty and initially with only one companion.
“At the time, there were only the two nunneries in Vietnam, the Carmel of Lisieux in Saigon and Hanoi,” explained Bishop Reina.
“Mother Agnes of Jesus, the sister of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who had just been declared venerable by the Church the year before, wrote a letter to Fr Benoît dated 2 December 1922, noting that the great Carmelite had expressed her desire to leave for Vietnam and suggesting her as the 'guardian angel' of the new male monastic community.”
Soon enough, the monks began growing rice like Vietnam’s poor peasants. Despite the harsh life (one of the first novices was mauled to death by a tiger), the ideal it embodied immediately attracted scores of young people.
Despite Vietnam’s extremely painful history in the 20th century, it was a seed that continues to grow today, with hundreds of monks in five Cistercian communities in different parts of the country.
Fr Benoît Thuận died on 25 July 1933. Two years later, his great desire to see his religious community welcomed into the Cistercian family became a reality.
In today's ceremony, Abbot Lepori stressed that almost a century later, the still "prophetic strength of this missionary-turned-monk” who took “his mission as far it could go.”
“Fr Benoît,” he noted, “understood that it is not enough to bring the proclamation of Christ the Redeemer to the remotest ends of the earth. It is necessary instead to propel it into the deepest of people’s hearts, where everyone lies abandoned to a meaningless life if they do not encounter Jesus Christ.”
For Abbot Lepori, “To encourage a monastic and missionary renewal in the Church, we need more than words; we need figures who know how to face with creative faithfulness the need for Christ in their time.”
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