BY PRISCILLA GREEAR

Staff Writer

FOREST PARK--In his perseverance to seek God's kingdom and enter the priesthood, Father Tuan Quoc Tran of Kim Thuong, South Vietnam decided in 1987 to escape his communist homeland, embarking on a spiritual and geographical journey.

He crossed the Vietnamese border into Cambodia and loaded in darkness with five other civilians into a small, canoe-shaped wooden boat guided by a fisherman through the Sea of Thailand. The one-day trip to Thailand risked attack by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, pirates, and stormy weather.

"It's very dangerous because of the communist government or police. If they caught me I could be in jail three, four years." he said. He was unable to speak Cambodian and said, "I didn't know where we'd go or what would happen. I was frozen by fear." The refugees prayed together on the trip.

Father Tran, who is now 38, remained in Thailand for two years as a political refugee at Patnatkhom, a camp of 17,000 in a half square mile area surrounded by a high metal fence. Each person slept on a nylon sheet on 18 square feet of space within the open warehouse area, often endured two- to three-day food shortages and received a daily allotment of four gallons of water for hygiene and drinking.

"During that time I was assisting the priest in the camp to serve the youth group in the camp to take catechism and activities," Father Tran recalls. He served Mass at 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. daily and worked with the choir. He was finally granted permission by the Immigration & Naturalization Service to come to the U.S. and arrived in New York in 1988 at the age of 29.

Before leaving South Vietnam, Father Tran had attended an underground Vietnamese training program for seminarians from 1980-83 studying philosophy and theology. He had limited study time, studied with used books from Catholic priests, and risked imprisonment in jail or concentration camp by the communist government.

Father Tran's dedication stems from his early exposure to the Catholic faith in his Vietnamese village and his determination to serve God and resist the repressive North Vietnamese government which took over the South in 1975.

Father Tran was raised in a strong Catholic family and describes his birth region as 95 percent Catholic. He attended St. Paul Seminary in the Archdiocese of Xuan Loc in the seventh grade and says, "I think that influenced me to be a priest."

When the communists invaded and closed seminaries, Father Tran returned to Kim Thuong to finish high school and work in the fields. In 1978 he entered a technical college to acquire veterinary skills to raise cattle, yet quit the school when government work requirements demanded he deny his faith and accept "the communist religion."

In the U.S. he earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and theology from St. Johns University in Queens, N.Y. He studied English for a year, passed the Testing of English as a Foreign Language exam, and studied at Mt. St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., where he received a master's of divinity in May.

Father Tran originally was invited to work in the Archdiocese of Atlanta by Msgr. Francis Pham Van Phuong of Our Lady of Vietnam Mission in 1988. He was later contacted by Msgr. Donald Kenny, archdiocesan vocations director, and decided to come to Atlanta in 1992.

"I miss Vietnam very much because my parents and also my siblings live there," Father Tran said, but he likes Atlanta and one brother and two sisters of his 10 siblings have moved here from Vietnam.

"I am very happy to begin ministering here because I received a lot of support from the archdiocese and from Msgr. (Edward) Dillon and Msgr. Kenny," he says. Father Tran has been assigned as a parochial vicar at St. Joseph's Church in Marietta.

He looks forward to working with the congregation and plans to spend time learning in order to most effectively minister to the people. He plans to become involved with the pro-life movement, as in Maryland he served on a pro-life committee in which he prayed weekly in front of an abortion clinic and attended the March For Life in Washington, D.C.

After nine years of studying theology, he looks forward to working with youth as he did in Thailand, sharing experiences and motivating them to resist peer pressure and exercise their faith in confrontation with contemporary society.

Having lived in both the northern and southern U.S. he feels "a need for pastoral care for people of the South, especially with the (increasing) percentage of Catholics here. I hope I can contribute a little bit to evangelize and to care for people here." He says with slight frustration that he would like to improve his English. He studied Spanish for a year in college and hopes to further learn that language. When he's not serving others, he enjoys ping pong and photography.

He chose Our Lady of Vietnam Mission as the location for his first Mass, out of gratitude for parishioners' many prayers and support for him. Msgr. Phuong helped him to vest at his ordination.

His parents, Due Khac Tran and Lua Thi Nguyen, and other family members in Vietnam were unable to attend the service, yet Father Tran states they are "very happy to join with me in spirit only."