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Asian Americans bring special gift to Church

By Roxanne King

In 1981, then 12-year-old Thanh Nguyen and two of his brothers fled Vietnam on a small boat with 40 others. Attacked by pirates, the refugees spent five days adrift without food or water before landing in Thailand where Nguyen spent two years in a refugee camp before arriving in Colorado.

Now a 32-year-old seminarian for the Archdiocese of Denver, Nguyen credits faith with getting him through the violence and loss.

"Faith helped me a lot," Nguyen said. "When I look back, I recognize how much God loved me. Therefore, I do something to respond to his love by joining the seminary."

Born and raised Catholic, Nguyen remembers beginning the day with 5 a.m. Mass and ending it with a family rosary in the evening.

"That's how I was brought up in my faith," he said. "At first I did not understand, but now I do have understanding and am grateful that (my parents) made me go to church and pray the rosary. I feel my faith is a wonderful gift now."

Respect, devotion and commitment to the faith are traits the various Asian American groups — which include Vietnamese, Hmong, Korean, Filipino, Chinese and Japanese — share in common and are blessing the archdiocese with, said Al Hooper, executive assistant for the Social Concerns office.

"Asian Catholics, whose numbers continue to grow throughout the archdiocese, bring a renewed dedication and zeal to the Church," Hooper said. "Committed to the parish, (which is) the center of religious life, and often, community life, the parish is maintained, perhaps built, and always invigorated by the faithful congregation."

Queen of Vietnamese Martyrs
A decade ago, the Vietnamese Catholic community transformed a Wheat Ridge movie theater into Queen of Vietnamese Martyrs Church and a former pancake house into a parish center. In 1997, they hired contractors to build the shell of a much larger parish center, which was dedicated by Archbishop Charles Chaput last year. Parishioners were responsible for the finishing work and are just weeks away from completing the project.

Recently assigned to serve a pastoral internship at All Souls Church in Englewood, Queen of Vietnamese Martyrs is Nguyen's home parish.

"We have more than 800 youth in the church, so we needed (classrooms) for them and we needed a big facility for parish gatherings," Nguyen said. "The people are very grateful and devoted to building and construction — we give a lot of ourselves to the Vietnamese Catholic community in helping and working to build our parish."

St. Lawrence Korean Church
The same level of commitment exists in the Korean Catholic community, which four years ago built St. Lawrence Korean Church in Aurora.

"Our church is a social and spiritual center for more than 800 community members from (as far away as) the Estes Park and Fort Collins areas, with the numbers growing each year," said Hae-OK "Elizabeth" Lee, the parish's director of religious education. "Over the past decade, the Korean-American population in Denver alone has more than doubled."

A healthy Colorado economy has recently attracted large numbers of immigrants from numerous ethnic groups, Hooper said. Many southeast Asians, like Nguyen, emigrated here during or after the Vietnam War.

Hmong Catholic Community
Although retaining cultural identity and traditional customs can be challenging in a new land, the newcomers find positive support in their parish communities, which provide bilingual Masses and religious education. Some offer English classes for adults and Asian language classes for children. Such is the case at All Saints Church in Denver, which serves about 80 Hmong families from Cambodia.

"We teach the Hmong language to the Hmong children," said parish catechist Lo Thao, 53. "We don't like to forget our language."

The parish recently acquired a grant to pay for the creation of Hmong "story cloths," which office manager Richard Wilhelm described as "a tradition used to remember historic moments."

"They cut out symbols and sew them on cloth. It comes out very colorful and tells a story at the same time," Wilhelm said. "The stories they tell will be the journey of the Hmong community through their Catholic faith."

A catechist for over 16 years, Thao is proud of his faith, which he converted to long before leaving Cambodia 23 years ago.

"When I was a teenager, I saw the way (missionaries) helped the people understand God," he said. "So that is why I joined the Roman Catholic Church. We are the first church. The church Jesus founded."

Lee, too, is a convert.

"I became a Catholic when I was 26 years old," she said. "I was the first Christian in our whole family history. One of the reasons I became Catholic was the beautiful musical celebration of the Mass. Koreans love music, particularly, (they) love to sing —- and (to) sing together during Mass."

Masses celebrated in the various Asian dialects are "immense expressions of God's faithful people and the fullness of His Church," Hooper said, adding that likewise, "hospitality, honor for guests, reverence for the religious, respect for elders and concern for the young illustrate the fullness of the Asian cultures and their veneration for the dignity of the human person."

Filipino Catholics
For Philippine born Father Gregorio Mirto, pastor of St. William's Church in Fort Lupton and its two missions, Catholicism and his native culture go hand-in-hand.

"It's a symbiotic relationship," he said. "The culture helps the practice of the faith. For example, we have very close family relationships. In the Philippines we don't have nursing homes, so it is one of the children who takes care of aging parents.

"There is great respect for elders," he continued. "At the end of the day, when we get home, we kiss the parents' hands as a sign of respect. When it comes to addressing elders, there is always a title of respect used. For example, I have an elder brother, I don't simply say his name, there is first a title of respect."

Queen of Peace Church in Aurora boasts a significant Filipino population that has brought a regional devotion to the parish. Our Lady of Antipolo, also known as the Black Virgin, is a devotion from an area east of Manila. The original statue was taken to Manila from Mexico in the 17th century. Because the statue withstood a century's worth of voyages between the two lands, it earned the title, Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, and became a popular devotion among travelers.

Archbishop Charles Chaput will dedicate a shrine to Our Lady of Antipolo at Queen of Peace following a 6 p.m. Mass, May 27. A procession and dinner will follow the blessing.

"Our Lady of Antipolo is a devotion in the Tagalog region," Father Mirto explained, adding that the Philippines are made up of some 7,100 islands on which more than 85 major dialects are spoken.

Devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help and to St. Lorenzo Ruiz, the first Filipino martyred for the faith, are other popular devotions in the Philippines, Father Mirto said.

Born and raised Catholic, vocations to the priesthood were numerous in Father Mirto's family.

"I had uncles who were priests, some of them were archbishops. Some were simple priests, some monsignors," he said, adding that for him, Catholicism "is the very essence of my whole being as a person. Father Greg has got to be Catholic, that's it."

That level of devotion, is a hallmark among Asian Catholics, Hooper said.

"As history has unfolded throughout the world and Asian countries have found themselves in the midst of such history, our Catholic Asian communities, hopefully, and rightfully, have found solace and preserve in this land," Hooper said. "The faithful and devoted Catholic Asian communities within the archdiocese have enlightened the whole congregation of believers and have brought many refreshing gifts and talents to God's Church and His people.

"We pray for a continuation of blessings for our Catholic Asian brothers and sisters and we encourage young Catholic Asian Americans to find peace in their hearts and endless dignity in their histories, identities and traditions," he said.