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Author Topic: Autobiography of Archbishop Thuc  (Read 158556 times)

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Offline Persto

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Re: Autobiography of Archbishop Thuc
« Reply #665 on: Today at 06:56:24 AM »

St. Andrew's Benedictine Abbey, Bruges, Belgium
Interview with Elisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong (Video in post above)

She says that her uncle, President Diem, had wanted to be a Benedictine monk.  They had a Benedictine monastery near where they lived in Hue, Vietnam.  He would take them for walks to visit there.  Diem had wanted to be a priest when he was young, and attended seminary, but was forced to drop out since he was unable to eat fish without becoming sick. This had prevented him from following the seminary's custom of consuming fish on Fridays.  Later in his life when he was in exile in Europe, he went to the Benedictine Abbey in Bruges, Belgium,  and asked to be a Benedictine Oblate.  He was accepted as an Oblate, and for the rest of his life, he lived an austere life.  His neice says he slept on boards instead of a bed (even when he lived in the Presidential Palace).  He ate different food than everybody else, plain, poor food.  His niece visited the Abbey in Bruges, and was able to read the correspondence between her uncle and the Abbey over many years.  They have preserved all the letters in their library.

Abbot Lu after 1946
Did They Know Each Other?
There is a fascinating story of the conversion of a former Prime Minister of China named Lu Zhengxiang on this  CI thread: (page 10, post #146)
https://www.cathinfo.com/crisis-in-the-church/stories-of-conversion/msg1035785/#msg1035785

Lu Zhengxiang was raised Protestant, married a Belgian Catholic woman, and converted to Catholicism.  At the death of his wife he retired from an active life, and in 1927 became a postulant, under the name Dom Pierre-CĂ©lestin, in the Benedictine monastery of Sint-Andries in Bruges, Belgium (pictured above). He was ordained a priest in 1935.  In August 1946 Pope Pius XII appointed Lu titular abbot of the Abbey of St. Peter in Ghent.  Dom Lu died in Bruges, Belgium on 15 January 1949.

Diem had visited the Abbey in Bruges to become a Benedictine Oblate.
Diem and Abp. Thuc were in Rome @ 1950 and had an audience with PXII, and may have visited the abbey in Bruges shortly after the death of Dom Lu.  It may even be possible that they knew and corresponded with each other before that.  Was this the reason that Diem chose the Abbey in Bruges to become a Benedictine Oblate?