Dressed in embroidered silk robes from their native Vietnam, clergy, religious and lay members of the inaugural class of the Vietnamese International Institute of Pastoral Studies gathered at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center in Los Angeles June 1st for a one-year anniversary dinner attended by 80 well-wishers.
"This is the first institute ever in the history of the Vietnamese Catholic Church that confers the bachelor, master's and doctoral degrees in the area of ministry," said Father Peter Ngo, institute founder and adjutant judicial vicar of the archdiocesan Tribunal.
Since 1975, when the fall of Saigon resulted in the closure of Vietnam's only pontifical seminary offering a bachelor degree in theology, no advanced theological and pastoral Vietnamese-language courses leading towards degrees have been available anywhere until the institute was established in March 2005 through the Graduate Theological Foundation in South Bend, Indiana.
In its first year, 17 students from California, Texas, North Carolina and Vietnam have studied Canon Law, Pastoral Studies, Theology and Scripture through a combination of residency and long distance learning courses.
"The future looks bright and optimistic," said Father Ngo, whose 450-page GTF doctoral thesis became the working document toward the establishment of the Vietnamese-language pastoral studies institute. According to Father Ngo, enrollment over the past year has swelled to 40 students with 200 applicants on a waiting list.
"We want to acknowledge the great achievement that the Vietnamese community has accomplished with the establishment of this institute," said Msgr. Charles Chaffman, archdiocesan Judicial Vicar. "All of the students who come and do their field education with us, we welcome them."
Since December of 2005, Msgr. Chaffman and Father Ngo have served as co-directors of a new Tribunal Institute in collaboration with the GTF to respond to the shortage of canonists and qualified Tribunal staff in the U.S. and abroad. Thirty-five students have enrolled in the different courses of the Tribunal program, which, along with the Vietnamese Institute, has been endorsed by Cardinal Roger Mahony. |