From CNA Daily News
My Tho, Vietnam – The newly appointed Bishop of My Tho, Peter Nguyen Van Kham, has voiced enthusiasm for evangelizing and forming the faithful in his diocese for lively participation in the life of the Church.
The newly appointed Bishop of My Tho, Peter Nguyen Van Kham (CNA Daily News)
“Evangelization must be the great task and challenge for my ministry in the coming years,” Bishop Nguyen told CNA July 30 via email.
He noted that his appointment comes at a time when the Vietnamese bishops’ conference has begun a three-year plan for encouraging evangelization: that of families in 2014, parishes in 2015, and society in 2016.
Bishop Nguyen, who had been an auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Saigon, was appointed My Tho’s bishop July 26.
He was born in 1952 in a suburb of Hanoi. Two years later, when Ho Chi Minh defeated the French and consolidated communist control over northern Vietnam, his family fled, along with hundreds of thousands of other Catholics, to the south.
He studied philosophy at Saint Thomas Seminary in Long Yuen, theology at Saint Joseph´s Seminary in Saigon, and holds a doctorate in pastoral theology from the Catholic University of America.
In 1980, he was ordained a priest of the Saigon archdiocese, and in 2008 became an auxiliary bishop there.
“I have received abundant blessings during 34 years of serving in the Archdiocese of Hochiminh City,” he said. “The diocese is present in a large city that is seen as the social and economic center of Vietnam, and undergoing rapid changes in the last decades.”
“In this setting, the most important lesson I have learned is how to build up and foster the harmony ‘with the heavens, with the earth, and with human beings’. That means keeping and cultivating the unity in diversity by listening, team-working, collaborating for God’s Kingdom.”
Bishop Nguyen added that while serving as Saigon’s diocesan pastoral center director, his focus was on the lay faithful, “who bring about … vibrancy for the life of the Church.”
“They must play a greater role in the Church, and as a result, formation is needed.”
Read the full story from CNA Daily News.
