Mary frees Vietnamese bishop from prison

21 November 1988 marked twelve years since Bishop Francis-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận, coadjutor of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), was imprisoned. Arrested on 15 August 1975 - the feast of Mary's Assumption - he saw that date as a sign that the Blessed Virgin would never abandon him. This hope, despite the often appalling conditions of imprisonment and solitary confinement, kept him alive. He was convinced that he owed his release to Our Lady, who actually gave him proof of her intervention, at a completely unexpected time. 

Reasons to believe:

• Bishop Thuận was considered by the communist regime to be "a very dangerous prisoner": he was targeted for his faith as well as his family connections to Ngô Đình Diệm, the former president of South Vietnam, an irreconcilable enemy of communism, who was also also a charismatic figure and leader of the Vietnamese Church. By uniting resistance to the regime around him, Thuan could have become as formidable as Lech Walesa in Poland. This alone explained his long detention.

• He also had diplomatic value because of his relations in the Western world and with the Vatican. He was therefore a hostage whose safety and acceptable living conditions could be used as leverage for Vietnam, at the time isolated from the international stage. This went on for a long time.

• Despite repeated pressure and ill-treatment, Thuận never admitted to the implausible charges against him, and this failure by the political police earned him the hatred of officials who wished to see him dead and would not release him for anything in the world.

• Worried about the destabilisation of the USSR provoked by Gorbachev and emerging from a conflict with China, the regime, in order not to admit its fragility, opted for tougher repression of Catholics. So nothing indicates that the Vietnamese leaders would have had a sudden change of heart towards their prisoner.

• Thuan's release would have amounted to "losing face", something impossible in the Asian mindset, especially in the context of the recent beatification of the Vietnamese martyrs, which the government took as a provocation.

• The archbishop, who had already benefited from a miracle when, as a young priest he was instantly cured of severe tuberculosis, fully trusted in Mary's protection over him. He offered this prayer to her on each of her feast days: "Mother, if I am of any use to the Church by being in prison, do me the grace and honour of letting me die there, but if you think I can still serve her in some other way, let my jailers release me." And he was certain that, if he were to be released, it would happen on a Marian feast day.

• For all these reasons, the decision to release Bishop Thuận on 21 November 1988 is impossible to comprehend. But it is worth noting that it was a Marian feast day: the Presentation of Mary in the Temple.