Man says his brother, a jailed Vietnamese priest, is witness to faith

Published: 2007-04-19

PERTH, Australia (CNS) -- A Vietnamese priest sentenced to jail for spreading propaganda has accepted his suffering as an opportunity to bear witness to Catholicism, said his older brother. "He has said that going to jail, for him, is a chance to convert people and baptize them," said Nguyen Hoang An of his brother, Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly. Vietnamese prisons do not allow inmates to be visited by priests, An told The Record, the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Perth, through an interpreter. An has lived in Australia since 1983 but speaks little English. An said that during Father Ly's long years in jail he has converted many prisoners and prison guards to the Catholic faith. Father Ly, who has already spent 14 years in Vietnamese prisons -- much of it in solitary confinement, was recently sentenced to eight more years in jail. Father Ly and four pro-democracy lay Catholic activists were jailed after speaking against Vietnam's one-party government.

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