Page 4, 14th February 2003
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A FORMER chaplain to the Vietnamese community of Birmingham has been brutally murdered on a return visit to his home country.
Mgr Peter Dao Duc Diem, 63, described as a "very devout and holy priest", bled to death in a hotel room in Hue City, 430 miles from the Vietnam capital, Hanoi.
He had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck.
The priest had returned to Vietnam only two weeks ago. to celebrate the lunar New Year — his first visit home since leaving as one of the boat people in the 1970s.
Embassy officials said Doan Christopher Thanh, 27, a British passport holder also of Vietnamese origin, was travelling with Mgr Diem and was helping police with inquiries. He remains in custody but as The Catholic Herald went to press had not been charged with any offence.
The pair were reported to have checked in together at the Truong Giang. Hotel. Staff there said that on January 25 Mr Thanh had made repeated telephone calls from the reception desk to enquire whether his "father" had come down for breakfast.
The priest was later found murdered in the room the men were sharing.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham paid tribute this week to a priest who had worked tirelessly for the community he loved.
"The apparently violent and unexpected circumstances of his death makes this loss all the harder to bear." he said. "We pray for the repose of his soul and the comfort of the Vietnamese Catholics in this country."
The archbishop sent a message of condolence to Bishop Nguyen van Nhon of Dalat, the diocese where Mgr Diem was ordained.
Mgr Diem entered the priesthood in 1969, and left Vietnam a decade later, joining the exodus of refugees fleeing religious and cultural persecution. After eight days adrift on the South China Sea he was rescued by a British ship and taken to a refugee camp in Singapore before corning to England in January 1980.
He was incardinated into the Archdiocese of Birmingham and was attached to the parish of St Francis, Handsworth. In 1990 he was appointed monsignor in recognition of his work with the Vietnamese community. He helped to establish the Vietnamese Pastoral Centre in Birmingham, which together with a Londonbased centre serves Britain and Ireland, fostering the Catholic faith and helping Vietnamese to integrate without losing their national identities.
The centre has a chapel dedicated to the Vietnamese Martyrs and a Marian shrine to the Queen of Vietnam. The late Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyan visited the centre in the 1990s.
Fr John Minh expressed the shock of the Vietnamese community in the city as it comes to terms with Mgr Diem's death. "We miss him not only as a pastor sent to us by God through the Archdiocese of Birmingham, but also as a father of our own blood and flesh," he said "We pray that his family and all of us may receive God's consolation at this sad time, may our beloved Mgr Peter Dao Due Diem be rewarded with eternal happiness in God's Kingdom."
Mgr Diem's Requiem Mass was held in Dalat last Saturday. Bishop van Nhon officiated. A requiem was also held at St Francis' Church on Wednesday.
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