The group of young Catholics in Vietnam came together on a camping trip to pray, study the Gospel, and sleep under the stars. Then the police showed up and hauled the campers away to the station, where they spent the night in a cell under the watch of the authorities. Fear might have been expected. Joy, not so much.
Yet the members of the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement were happy, said Hung Hoang, one of the leaders on the trip.
“We knew we were suffering because we were living our faith,” he said in an interview at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in South Philadelphia. “We trusted Jesus would cover us. If they crucified Him, why would they spare me? If I must suffer with Him, that is an honor.”
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