Crossing the Pacific in a dilapidated boat, 10-year-old Bich Vu had a face-off with God. "If you save me and my family," he promised nearly three decades ago, "my life will be yours."
The miracle happened, and Vu, now 39, kept his word by becoming a priest.
"My experience on the ocean," he says, "made my faith grow stronger. It taught me that I was weak. I couldn't save myself; I had to depend on God."
Vu, known to parishioners at Anaheim's St. Boniface Catholic Church as Father Augustine, is part of a wave of immigrant Vietnamese priests helping ease a critical cleric shortage and changing the face of the Roman Catholic Church.
"Vietnamese priests are filling the gap," said Ryan Lilyengren, a spokesman for the Diocese of Orange. "People are calling them the new Irish."
Though Asians are only 1% of the estimated 77 million U.S. Catholics, they account for 12% of Catholic seminary students, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. In places such as Orange County, home to the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam, that has translated into major change: Of 181 diocesan priests, Lilyengren said, almost 28% are Asian, predominantly Vietnamese.
The influx of Vietnamese clergy comes as the number of priests nationwide has dropped nearly 30% in three decades, from 58,900 in 1975 to about 41,700 last year.
Vietnamese immigrants are stepping in, experts say, for a number of reasons. They come from a culture steeped in religious values that bestows high status on the clergy. They also grew up in a poor country where entering the priesthood was an economic step up. And many lived through political and religious repression when they weren't allowed to practice their faith, let alone become priests.
"Under the Communists we couldn't go to seminary," Vu said, "[so] we have a desire to become priests."
Experts attribute the U.S. priest shortage to several factors, most notably a change in the culture of affluent Western nations that devalues profitless service while affording young men lucrative career opportunities.
"We live in the most affluent nation in history, and a young man between 20 and 30 has many more options here," said Dean R. Hoge, a sociology professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and co-author of a 2006 book, "International Priests in America."
