The closing session of the diocesan phase of the process of beatification of Fr Benoît Thu­n (1880-1933) came to an end today in the Lateran Palace. This is a “moment of celebration for the whole Church” in Rome as well as in Vietnam, said Bishop Baldassare Reina, the vicegerent of the Diocese of Rome.
Born Henri François Denis, the French missionary arrived in Vietnam in 1903 where he founded in 1918 the monastery of Our Lady of Annam in PhýÛc Sõn, Archdiocese of Hu¿, the country’s first male monastic community.
As required by canon law, the documentation concerning the holiness of this servant of God still highly venerated in Vietnam were sealed and handed over to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, in a ceremony attended by Dom Mauro Giuseppe Lepori, Abbot General of the Cistercian Order, and Dom John XXIII, Abbot President of the Cistercian Congregation of the Holy Family, the branch founded in Vietnam by Fr Benoît Thu­n.
A native of Boulogne-sur-Mere (France), Fr Henri François Denis was ordained a priest for the Mission Étrangères de Paris on 7 March 1903. He left for Vietnam a few months later, assigned to the mission in Hu¿, where he took the name Thu­n, which in Vietnamese means obedience.
He adapted to the local culture, interacting with people to serve them, without any air of superiority. Eventually, as he pursued his missionary apostolate, he felt strongly called to bear witness to the Gospel with a monastic style.