1307 Salesians from Vietnam visit Slovenia to honour memory of Province 'Patriarch' Fr Andrej Majcen
Subject: austraLasia #1307
From: Julian Fox
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:32:07 +0200
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
austraLasia #1283
austraLasia 1307
Salesians from Vietnam visit Slovenia to honour
memory of Province 'Patriarch' Fr
Andrej Majcen
LJUBLJANA: 26th October 2005 -- Fr Andrej Majcen died in
1999, but for
Vietnam's Salesians, the memory of this great pioneer and acknowledged
patriarch of the Province is vividly alive, so much so in fact that six
Vietnamese confreres, including Brothers
who had lived much of their Salesian lives with Fr Majcen, went to
Slovenia to celebrate the centenary of his birth there. To be precise,
Fr Majcen was born in 1904, but the centenary celebrations were
held this year partly to enable this very special group of the people
he so
loved and lived for to be present. The Vietnamese group of confreres
arrived in Trieste, north-eastern Italy on 20th October, where they
visited a missionary exhibition including an exhibit dedicated to Fr
Majcen. From there they entered Slovenia and on 21st visited a high
school in Zelinje where Fr Majcen returned to work after his expulsion
from Vietnam in 1976. They visited his tomb, and attended a full day
of lectures dedicated to Fr Majcen. The lectures by various local and
Salesian scholars, pointed to the heroic qualities of this great
Slovenian missionary.
Though not the very first Salesian to have worked in Vietnam - that
honour goes to another great missionary, the Frenchman Fr Dupont - Fr
Majcen is acknowledged as the founder,
along with his companion Fr Giacomino, of the ongoing Salesian presence
in Vietnam beginning with their arrival in Hanoi on 3rd October 1952.
The Salesians had been entrusted with 450 orphans at a work (The Family
of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus) that was personally handed over to
them by the newly appointed Bishop and ex-director of the same work.
From that time on, through time of intense joy and deep sorrow, the
name of Fr Andrej Majcen is written indelibly into the history and
lives of the Salesian presence in Vietnam. After Dien Bien Phu in
1954, and the division of the country, he transferred, with his
orphans, to the South, first to Buon ma Thuot and then to Thu Duc in
Saigon. In 1957 he opened the Thu Duc Aspirantate, with 50 aspirants,
as its Rector. A year later he became the first Provincial Delegate
(under China) and in 1960 became Director of novices for the first
group of 14 Vietnamese novices on home soil (still at Thu Duc). The
novitiate then transferred to Tram Hanh, still with Fr Majcen as Rector
and Director of novices. He returned to Thu Duc aspirantate in 1972 as
Rector, but in the difficult years leading up to the year 1975 when the
nation was unified and the Americans left the country. He briefly
became Director of novices again in 1975 but was expelled as the last
foreign missionary to leave Vietnamese soil in 1976. From then until
his death he continued to support the mission he loved so much.
No wonder, then, that his memory is so revered. He leaves a legacy
of a vital province with 258 confreres and a province which now records
19 missionaries currently serving the Church throughout the world,
including in Vietnam's 'own' Salesian mission in Mongolia.
NOTE: Though in Slovenian, the
www.donbosko.si website contains excellent photos of the event. Enough
to look for the word 'Majcen' to see them.
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