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Holy Rosary International Medical Mission non-profit charitable organization As cut from
Catholic Anchor |
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Alaska priest leads
medical mission to Vietnam’s poorest Small team overcomes communist government’s obstacles BY PATRICIA COLL FREEMAN Catholicanchor.org Dominican Father Francis Hung Le, pastor of Holy Family Cathedral in Anchorage, has just returned from a medical mission trip to the most remote and impoverished villages in the mountains of Vietnam. Accompanying him were a handful of volunteers who paid their own way to help — two physicians, three registered nurses, two pharmacists and a physician’s assistant. They brought with them leftover, unexpired medicines donated by friends and acquaintances — a supply valued at $400,000. In just two weeks, Feb. 8-22, the small team treated 1,200 people — the poorest of the poor suffering from anemia, infections, high blood pressure, parasites and tumors. Mission territory The volunteers’ base was Hue, a village in the heart of Vietnam — 600 miles from both Hanoi and Saigon. A central site of the 1968 Tet Offensive, Hue is Father Le’s boyhood home. In an interview with the Anchor, Father Le explained that from Hue, each day, the medical team traveled by bus to villages in the mountains on Vietnam’s northwest border with Laos. One-way, the trips took several hours. Since the communist Vietnamese government would not permit the group to stay overnight at the Catholic parishes in the villages, the team returned at the end of each day to a hotel in Hue. Father Le’s 81-year-old mother prepared evening meals for the visitors. Father Le said that ahead of a visit, the group contacted the Catholic parish or convent in the area, which in turn invited the area’s impoverished ill to come for a check-up by the traveling clinicians. Father Le’s brother, Father Ignatius Hoa Le, helped organize a clinic stop at his parish, Nhat Dong. At each site, the group set up areas for registration, a triage assessment by a nurse, an examination by a physician and a pharmacy, where medicines were dispensed. Hundreds of the poor and sick — mostly Buddhist — lined up for the medical provisions. Less than two percent of the rural inhabitants are Catholic. In one day, the team treated 340 people. As the mission’s chaplain, Father Le offered Mass at the local parish everyday. And he served as interpreter and managed logistics. Also, the group visited Nguyet Bieu shelter for women and orphanage run by the Sisters of the Lovers of the Cross. There, the sisters provide a home to pregnant mothers and their babies in need. The work of the sisters is invaluable, said Father Le. According to the communist government’s population control policy, couples may not have more than two children. Father Le lamented that consequently, Vietnam’s abortion rate is “high.” ‘Christ asked us to do it’ Helping those who suffer from such injustice and physical deprivations is “nothing new” for the Catholic Church, explained Father Le. The corporal works of mercy — such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting the imprisoned — are “forefront,” he added. Christians care for the “least of our brethren” because “Christ asked us to do it,” explained Father Le. On vacations years ago, he began helping transport medicines to a clinic for the poor in Peru. In 2006, Father Le and a retired physician and parishioner from his previous parish, Holy Rosary Church in Antioch, California established Holy Rosary International Medical Mission. Since then, a group of “ordinary Catholics and friends” has traveled to several underdeveloped countries to provide medical care and support to the poor. In Vietnam, the Catholic Church has served the needy since it first arrived in the 1600s. “Through the last 400 years in Vietnam, the Catholic Church has always taken care of the poor and run orphanages and shelters for women,” said Father Le. As a result, he said the church has “very strong credibility” among the predominantly non-Christian Vietnamese citizens. Persecuted for Christ But for that reason, the atheist communist government perceives the Catholic Church as a threat. “When communists took over the South in 1975,” said Father Le, “they tried to eliminate that voice from the people.” “By its nature, there is only the state. There is no competition,” he explained. “And so as we speak, the Catholic Church is under persecution, left and right,” he told the Anchor. In Vietnam, the Catholic Church cannot buy land to expand or open schools. Catholics may not teach in state schools either, and “the bishop cannot assign his people without permission from the government,” Father Le noted. In addition, it is “very difficult to open clinics,” he said. Father Le’s sister, Dr. Thanh Tinh Le, who lives and practices in Vietnam and who took part in the recent mission, regularly treats the poor in her living room at home. “Many organizations come into Vietnam,” noted Father Le. “But ours is different because we have a Catholic identity. We want to collaborate with the local church because we believe the local church can identify the poor better than the government.” This trip was Father Le’s fourth medical mission to Vietnam, and the group goes prepared to pay the $600 that communist officials demand under the table at Customs. “The need is so great in Vietnam,” he said. For future missions, Father Le seeks more medical workers — of any denomination — to help. Particularly, he hopes to draw in ophthalmologists to treat Vietnam’s elderly population, the vast majority of whom are blinded by cataracts. |
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Learn More The next Holy Rosary International Medical Mission is to the Philippines in February 2010. For more information, visit the Web site at hrimm.org. |
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