To celebrate the conclu-sion of the Marian month of May, over 10,000 people from the various parishes and co-mmunities in the diocese of Da Nang–spanning more than 10,000 square kilo-meters – made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Tra Kieu. According to the Vatican’s Fides news agency, the Marian Shrine commemorates an apparition of the Virgin Mary 140 years ago. Local tradition holds that Mary appeared to console, encourage, and help her children in times of difficulty.
Pilgrims took part in the journey on the Solemnity of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, which Archbishop Joseph Dang Duc, Coadjutor of the Archdiocese of Hue, described as “an event of love, faith, commitment, and service, an opportunity to profess one’s faith in the face of the challenges of the present time.” Abp Dang Duc described the pilgrimage to the Marian shrine of Tra Kieu as “not only an individual act, but a communal act to renew our vocation and mission, since we are all the people of God and we are all walking together in faith, in love, toward evangelization.” The Diocese of Da Nang has long been considered the cradle of Catholicism in southern Vietnam as it has roots to three Jesuit missionaries who arrived in Hoi An in 1615 to evangelize. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the diocese of Da Nang was one of the main centers of the diocese of Cochinchina in southern Vietnam as a place from where missionaries departed. Vietnam now has their first martyr, Blessed Andrew of Phu Yen, a catechist beatified by Pope St. John Paul II.
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