Vietnam on Rome agenda

by our Rome correspondent
THERE were signs this week of a thaw in the Holy See's difficult relations with Vietnam. Last weekend, for the first time ever, Pope John Paul II received about 20 Vietnamese bishops who head 2._5 million faithful.
The special audience came a week after a Vatican delegation, led by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray of the Holy See's Iustitia et Pax Council, met with government officials in Hanoi.
The cardinal said on his return that the Vietnamese "springtime had begun to bud" for Holy See relations in the Asian country. But the president of the Vietnamese episcopal conference, Bishop Paul Marie Nguyen Minh Nhat of Xuan Loc told the Pope that the status of the church in Vietnam was "discouraging".
He said five dioceses had no bishop, that there were fewer and fewer clergy because the government had imposed a restriction on entrance to seminaries and that there was no possibility of providing religious education for the faithful. An additional problem was that religious communities were isolated and scattered throughout the country.
There were signs of hope nevertheless following the Vatican delegation's visit to Hanoi that the "great silence" between the government and the church had now been broken, the bishop added.
John Paul agreed that a climate of mutual respect had characterised the Vatican delegation's meetings with government officials and invited Vietnamese Catholics to strive towards a "renewal of their church and their nation in the spirit of reconciliation".
SUCCESS in reclaiming land lost to the Sahel desert in Burkina Faso, the world's third poorest nation, will give new hope for the country's rural communities, according to a report released yesterday by the overseas development agency Oxfam. The report, Burkina — A new life for the Sahel? tells how farmland lost through climatic change and overgrazing has been brought back to life by building stone dykes along the contours of the land. "The results have been dramatic," said the report's author Robin Sharp. "The scheme, introduced by Oxfam in the early 1980s, now covers 17 of Burkina Faso's 30 provinces."'
POPE John Paul II has urged Catholics in Angola to mark next year's 500th anniversary of Christianity's arrival in the country by working towards the end of the 15 year long civil war. The anniversary should be "a time of unifying dialogue and