Dear Parishioners and Friends of St. Mary’s of the Lake

One time I was asked if there was any Marian apparition in Vietnam. As we are now in the month of May, ‘the Month of Mary,’ I’d like to introduce you to ‘OUR LADY OF LA VANG,’ which refers to a reported Marian apparition at a time when Catholics in Vietnam were persecuted and killed in the 18th & 19th centuries.

 The first Catholic missionaries who visited Vietnam in the 16th century were Portuguese. The Portuguese were followed by the Spaniards. However, only after the arrival of the French Jesuits in the 17th century did Catholicism begin to establish its position within the local population. The country leaders at the time, however, only considered Catholicism as a ‘foreign religion,’ and feared the spread of this religion. The Emperor heavily restricted the practice of Catholicism in 1798. Soon thereafter, the emperor issued an anti-Catholic edict in which persecution ensued. Many people sought refuge in the rain forest of La Vang in Central Vietnam, and many became very ill. While hiding in jungles, the community gathered every night at the foot of a tree to pray the rosary. One night, an apparition surprised them. In the branches of the tree a lady appeared, wearing the traditional Vietnamese dress & holding a child in her arms. The people present interpreted the vision as the Virgin Mary & the Infant Jesus. They said that Our Lady comforted them and told them to boil leaves from the trees for medicine to cure the ill. In 1802 the Christians returned to their villages, passing on the story of the apparition and its message. As the story of the apparition spread, many came to pray at this site. In 1820, a chapel was built. From 1830-1885 another wave of persecutions decimated the Christian population, during the height of which the chapel in honor of Our Lady of La Vang was destroyed. In 1886, construction on a new chapel began. Following its completion, the Chapel was consecrated in 1901. The Vietnamese Bishops Conference chose the church of Our Lady of La Vang as the National Shrine. La Vang then became the NATIONAL

MARIAN CENTER of Vietnam on April 13, 1961. Then Pope John XXIII elevated the Church of Our Lady of La Vang to the rank of a minor basilica on August 22, 1961. On June 19, 1998, then Pope John Paul II publicly recognized the importance of Our Lady of

La Vang and expressed desire to rebuild the La Vang Basilica in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the first vision.
 There are numerous shrines of Our Lady of La Vang among the Vietnamese communities in this Country. The biggest [see picture above] is the one on the grounds of the Cathedral in

Orange Diocese in California. Fr. Philip