September 19, 2008
http://www.ucanews.com/2008/09/19/government-suddenly-starts-public-project-at-former-apostolic-nunciature/
BANGKOK (UCAN) - Government authorities have started a construction project for a park and library at the controversial former apostolic nunciature in Ha Noi.
Local Church sources told UCA News that since the early morning of Sept. 19 hundreds of local policemen, mobile units and plainclothes security officials have erected iron barriers blocking the street off which the former nunciature stands from both ends. Security officials also stood guard along the street.
Signboards saying "Construction site, taking photos banned" were put up by the barriers, they added.
Two trucks and a crane were brought into the compound, which has been plowed, the sources said. Workers toppled the iron fence in front of the building in the morning and moved some furniture out of it.
The building is in the capital's Dong Da district.
With the street blocked, many parents could not carry their children to the day-care center Lovers of the Holy Cross nuns run in their convent.
According to the sources, warning bells rang out from nearby St. Joseph Cathedral and other churches in the capital.
They also said that an old woman managed to go and pray in front of the Pieta replica local Catholics put in the compound early this year, but police carried her off.
Hundreds of major seminarians from nearby St. Joseph Major Seminary, Lovers of the Holy Cross nuns, local priests and lay Catholics gathered at the gate of the nearby Ha Noi archbishop's house to protest the construction by singing hymns and reciting the rosary, the sources reported.
They said the sudden government move caught the local Church by surprise, and it has written the president, premier and Ha Noi authorities to protest the project.
In his petition to government leaders, Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of Ha Noi said the local Church protests the project, and he asked the government to stop besieging the archbishop's residence and damaging the nunciature site. They should return the site to the local Church to use for religious purposes and the community, he wrote.
State-run media reported that district government authorities announced their construction plan at the nunciature on Sept. 18, saying they would develop a flower garden on the 6,845-square-meter compound. The nunciature building will be repaired and renovated for use as a library, the media report said.
Last year, Archbishop Kiet petitioned the government to return the nunciature, which had housed a restaurant and gym club, to the local Church, which lacks facilities to meet increasing spiritual needs of local Catholics. Thousands of Catholics occupied the compound early this year but left after the government promised to return the property after the Feb. 7-9 Tet festival for the Vietnamese Lunar New year.
Authorities confiscated the building in 1959, after which the Holy See's delegate to Vietnam shifted to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in what was then South Vietnam. The post of apostolic delegate to Vietnam has been vacant since 1975, the year communists reunified Vietnam. The first delegate was appointed in 1925.
END
http://www.ucanews.com/2008/09/19/government-suddenly-starts-public-project-at-former-apostolic-nunciature/
BANGKOK (UCAN) - Government authorities have started a construction project for a park and library at the controversial former apostolic nunciature in Ha Noi.
Local Church sources told UCA News that since the early morning of Sept. 19 hundreds of local policemen, mobile units and plainclothes security officials have erected iron barriers blocking the street off which the former nunciature stands from both ends. Security officials also stood guard along the street.
Signboards saying "Construction site, taking photos banned" were put up by the barriers, they added.
Two trucks and a crane were brought into the compound, which has been plowed, the sources said. Workers toppled the iron fence in front of the building in the morning and moved some furniture out of it.
The building is in the capital's Dong Da district.
With the street blocked, many parents could not carry their children to the day-care center Lovers of the Holy Cross nuns run in their convent.
According to the sources, warning bells rang out from nearby St. Joseph Cathedral and other churches in the capital.
They also said that an old woman managed to go and pray in front of the Pieta replica local Catholics put in the compound early this year, but police carried her off.
Hundreds of major seminarians from nearby St. Joseph Major Seminary, Lovers of the Holy Cross nuns, local priests and lay Catholics gathered at the gate of the nearby Ha Noi archbishop's house to protest the construction by singing hymns and reciting the rosary, the sources reported.
They said the sudden government move caught the local Church by surprise, and it has written the president, premier and Ha Noi authorities to protest the project.
In his petition to government leaders, Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of Ha Noi said the local Church protests the project, and he asked the government to stop besieging the archbishop's residence and damaging the nunciature site. They should return the site to the local Church to use for religious purposes and the community, he wrote.
State-run media reported that district government authorities announced their construction plan at the nunciature on Sept. 18, saying they would develop a flower garden on the 6,845-square-meter compound. The nunciature building will be repaired and renovated for use as a library, the media report said.
Last year, Archbishop Kiet petitioned the government to return the nunciature, which had housed a restaurant and gym club, to the local Church, which lacks facilities to meet increasing spiritual needs of local Catholics. Thousands of Catholics occupied the compound early this year but left after the government promised to return the property after the Feb. 7-9 Tet festival for the Vietnamese Lunar New year.
Authorities confiscated the building in 1959, after which the Holy See's delegate to Vietnam shifted to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in what was then South Vietnam. The post of apostolic delegate to Vietnam has been vacant since 1975, the year communists reunified Vietnam. The first delegate was appointed in 1925.
END