By Gretchen Keiser

A celebration that began in mid-afternoon and lasted well into the night with solemnity, followed by entertainment, ushered in Our Lady of Vietnam Mission Church.

Vietnamese Catholics in the archdiocese, who have been striving since 1985 to have a church reflecting their culture, hosted between 1,500 and 2,000 people for the dedication Mass Sept. 3 and a supper and musical program afterward.

The sense of joy seemed as apparent as the wind that tossed and curled rows of colored flags lining Thurman Road in Forest park, waving red and white for the Sacred Heart, blue and white for the colors of Mary and yellow and white for the papal insignia. Each person was greeted and given a bilingual program and a lapel button imprinted with the name of the church in Vietnamese and the image of a Madonna and child.

An outdoor altar that had been constructed, since the crowd outnumbered the small brick church’s indoor seating, was designed like a colorful pagoda with murals showing the Madonna against a background of the church itself. The entrance procession, led by children in the mission’s Eucharistic Youth Group dressed in matching, brightly colored uniforms, was accompanied not by music but a booming drum.

The people who came for Mass overflowed the shade of a large yellow and white tent into extra seating on the lawn, while priests from the archdiocese and visiting Vietnamese priests from Louisiana, South Carolina, Nebraska, Missouri, Virginia and Savannah, Ga., climbed green carpeted steps to the altar where Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, celebrated the dedication Mass.

The formal ritual of blessing and dedicating a new church and altar, in the context of a Mass, was carried out by Archbishop Marino, with cultural accents from the Vietnamese tradition provided by the community.

Young women from the choir of Our Lady of Vietnam performed a graceful and slow liturgical dance, holding bouquets of rosebuds which were offered to Mary as a symbolic giving of hearts to her. Father Francis Pham Van Phuong said this dance is one of several frequently used in Vietnam and is similar to the May crowing of Mary with flowers so common in American Catholic churches and schools.

The choir sang several hymns in Vietnamese during the bilingual Mass. While Archbishop Marino walked from the outdoor altar over to the church itself to bless and anoint it, a string of fireworks was exploded, a cultural adaptation that Father Francis said he had forewarned local police about a bit ahead of time. “People believe the sounds will dispel all the darkness, provide a good opening, a good beginning,” he explained.

After the Mass, which lasted for over two hours, Vietnamese food prepared by the women of the community was served to some 1,600 people, while the choir and members of the congregation and Vietnamese entertainers sang, danced and performed for the people still gathered on the expansive lawn. A dance with Vietnamese singers was held later that night at an Atlanta hotel to continue the celebration. Awards were presented to several leaders who had served with great sacrifice to make the new mission possible.

The church, formerly the Forest Park Presbyterian Church, was purchased by the Vietnamese Catholic community, with the aid of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, in March. They began celebrating Mass there during Holy Week, but had waited to hold an appropriately complete celebration until now. To pay for the purchase, the community, under parish council president Bui Van Tam, had raised approximately $200,000, including a $50,000 donation from St. John the Evangelist parish in Hapeville, where Vietnamese Catholics have worshipped until the mission was established. An additional $100,000 was borrowed from the archdiocese to pay for the church, but Father Francis, who is administrator of the mission, said he believed the community could pay back $50,000 of the loan already.

In his homily, which was translated into Vietnamese by Father Francis, the archbishop spoke of the suffering of the community, having to leave their homeland and so much they cherished behind. The Vietnamese people, he said, are known for their virtues of courage, perseverance, loyalty and love of God and family. “Over the course of time,” he said, “you have claimed a new country, a new birth, a new home… Today, this is a sign of God’s promise fulfilled.”

It is also a day of joy for the rest of the church, he said, because of the cultural richness the Vietnamese Catholics will bring to the archdiocese and the community as a whole.

Such a mission devoted to Vietnamese Catholics is not unique in the United States, said Father Peter Tran, who works for the U.S. Catholic Conference in pastoral care to migrants and refugees.

While various approaches are used in different archdioceses, he said the mission devoted to Vietnamese Catholics enables the community to reach out to other Vietnamese in evangelization and to reach out in reconciliation to Vietnamese Catholics who may have left the church when they encountered an American Catholic community that seemed foreign or unwelcoming. Across the country, he said, a concern is to bring back Vietnamese Catholics to the church.

Masses at Our Lady of Vietnam are Saturday at 5 p.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m.