Joachim Pham

Filles de Marie Immaculée Srs. Mary Do Thi Ha and Anne Nguyen Thi Nguyet, who work at the Kim Long Charity Clinic in Hue, Vietnam, talk to GSR about the clinic's model of healing people in need.

Vietnam has an estimated 242,000 people with HIV. Religious sisters run a clinic where they serve some 200 HIV/AIDS patients; the sisters support those rejected by family and society, and they fight misinformation.

Unseasonal weather in Vietnam has left many struggling. Congregations have been providing to hundreds in need. Sisters continue this aid amid the Lunar New Year, providing gifts to help people celebrate.

Sisters from Lovers of the Holy Cross of Vinh, St. Paul de Chartres, Daughters of Our Lady of the Visitation, and Missionaries of Charity Institute have come to the aid of hundreds of flood survivors in Vietnam.

Most kidney patients in Vietnam gather in the nation's big cities for medical care, as other places lack specialized equipment. Catholic sisters lead efforts to ease the patients' loneliness and financial burdens.

Sisters from multiple congregations in Vietnam celebrated Tet Trung Thu — or the Mid-Autumn Festival — for hundreds of orphans, disabled children, people affected by HIV/AIDS and others.  

Hundreds of sisters from various congregations in Vietnam volunteered to provide material and emotional support for tens of thousands of pilgrims at a Marian shrine.

Congregations in Hue, Vietnam, organized recent gatherings to promote religious vocations among young women. Sisters told how they followed religious vocations versus other ways of life. They shared more details with GSR.

Most sisters, novices and postulants from the convents and communities of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary of Bui Chu have been infected with COVID-19, since the pandemic hit their motherhouse in January.

Approximately 1,000 people so far have been treated without charge at this branch of the Kim Long Charity Clinic, which opened with 200 beds in December 2021 to treat local COVID-19 patients.

In Vietnam, the group Thap Sang Hy Vong creates opportunities for women who have had abortions to reconcile themselves with their unborn children, experience divine mercy and build up a civilization of love and culture of life.

In Vietnam, "Crèches are absolutely indispensable to local Catholic families in the Christmas season as they bind the material and spiritual worlds together," Sr. Anna Vo Thi Ngoi Khen said. Sisters and young Catholics have made crèches for families challenged by COVID-19 and recent floods.

As students' parents have been left unemployed by the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam, Catholic nuns have stepped in to provide help with fees, computer access, textbooks, uniforms, school supplies, bicycles and more.

As the delta variant spreads in Vietnam, sisters in heavily affected areas have moved some of their ministries online or now run them over the phone to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

In Ho Chi Minh City and two provinces in Vietnam badly hit by COVID-19's delta variant, hundreds of women and men religious have voluntarily joined front-line forces to take care of patients at understaffed hospitals.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is a chance to share what we have with our brothers and sisters in need," explains one of the many Vietnamese sisters whose congregations are providing free food for people under quarantine.

St. Paul de Chartres sisters and other Catholic nuns in Vietnam care for TB patients at public hospitals, show them how to take medicine and get follow-up medical examinations, and offer them basic food and money.

Photo essay - Sisters in Vietnam's central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue return home to welcome the new year, visit relatives and friends, and bring Christian values to others during their nine-day holiday.

Ahead of the Lunar New Year, congregations of women religious across Vietnam have stepped in to help people who lost homes and livelihoods in severe flooding that hit the central provinces in October and November.

Nuns from four congregations in Vietnam's central provinces that are being hit by the worst floods in decades are providing emergency aid for hundreds of thousands of victims.