Vietnamese community breaks ground
Parish expects church construction to wrap up in ’08

By Rebecca Bostic, The Catholic Sun
June 7, 2007

Vietnamese Catholics in Phoenix are one step closer to a church home they can call their own.

Contractors broke ground at the site of the future church May 14 on the corner of Northern and 29th avenues. Dominican Father Joseph Nguyen, pastor of Vietnamese Martyrs Parish, and the Vietnamese Catholic community gathered on the site for a May 12 Mass to celebrate the groundbreaking.

The future church will celebrate Mass in Vietnamese and the exterior design is modeled after Vietnamese architecture.

“We need to maintain our culture, our language and that way we can unite,” Fr. Nguyen said about building the Vietnamese Catholic community its own church. The community currently rents a hall at Most Holy Trinity for Mass.

“It’s about time we practice our faith in our modern tongue,” he said. “We cannot express what we believe in God if we can not celebrate or worship Him in our language.”

Nguyen said as long as money is available, the church building construction will last 10 months. But the parish still needs approximately $1.3 million to finish the project.

Nguyen is hopeful that the fundraising will be successful because of the community’s needs.

“Through the history of our community, probably beginning when arriving here, we wished that we had our own place to worship God,” Nguyen said. “That was more than 30 years ago. So that is why we are so excited that the construction is started. We gather here to thank God and praise God so we can finish.”

Future Vietnamese Martyrs’ parishioner Richard Nguyen is thrilled at the prospect of finally having a church building to call home.

“It’s like if you never have had a house before and you rent an apartment and pay the payment but get nothing in return when you leave,” Nguyen said. “Now we are going to have our own house — just a little house — but this is the house for us, so we are excited.