Keywords

6.1 Introduction

Our Lady of La Vang (Đức Mẹ La Vang) is one name that Catholics in Vietnam use for the Virgin Mary. There is a pilgrimage shrine of Our Lady of La Vang that is today situated in Hải Phú Commune, Hải Lăng District, Quảng Trị Province, in the central region of Vietnam. The shrine of Our Lady of La Vang under La Vang parish belongs to the Hue Archdiocese under the administration of the Vietnamese Catholic Church. This shrine has been designated as a National Marian Shrine and a Minor Basilica as well. It is also a place of great veneration, and many devout pilgrims flock there on the occasion of the great pilgrimage festival (Đại hội hành hương), which is organized once every three years in August.

Since the implementation of the policy of Renovation (Đổi Mới) in 1986, the Communist Party and the government of Vietnam have implemented a moderate policy toward religious affairs and encouraged the inclusion of cultural values from religions into the development of the country. In the process, Vietnamese scholars have examined and discussed the relationship between Catholicism and Vietnamese national culture. In particular, they have conceptualized the issue of the Vietnamization/localization of Catholicism from the perspective of culturology, a line of inquiry developed by Soviet scholars that focuses on an exploration of the nature, laws of existence, and the development of culture, the humanistic meanings of culture, and methods of studying culture (Nguyễn 2006: 6). Among other cases of the localization of Catholicism in Vietnam, the localization of Our Lady of La Vang has emerged as an interesting topic that has sustained scholarly debates on Catholicism in Vietnam. Nguyễn Hồng Dương, a former researcher of the Institute for Religious studies (IRS) of the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) in Vietnam, argues that the Vietnamese have an original practice of Mother Goddess worship (Đạo Mẫu), and that they then transformed (chuyển hóa) or Vietnamized (Việt hóa) the Virgin Mary of Catholicism in light of this worship (Nguyễn 2001: 311, 2004: 235–245). Given the case of Our Lady of La Vang, he says that her first apparition near a banyan tree in 1798 implied a reference to the Mother Goddess of the Forest (Bà Chúa Thượng Ngàn), which is one of the mother goddesses worshipped by Vietnamese (Nguyễn 2004: 241). According to Nguyễn Hồng Dương, the Vietnamization of Catholicism (Việt hóa đạo), including the Vietnamization of Marian devotion, was a significant outcome of Catholic inculturation in Vietnam (Nguyễn 1999: 37). However, such inculturation was, according to Nguyễn Hồng Dương, a return of Vietnamese Catholics to the original culture of Vietnamese. Nguyễn Hồng Dương said that Vietnamese Catholics are first and foremost Vietnamese people who have imbued the national cultural identity (bản sắc văn hóa dân tộc) (Nguyễn 1999: 37). Nevertheless, Nguyễn Hồng Dương, after converting to the Catholic faith, Vietnamese Catholics were initially not allowed to maintain their traditional rites and lifestyles, and consequently their consciousness also changed and they finally became strangers even in their own homeland. Nguyễn Hồng Dương states further, however, that over the course of time, Vietnamese Catholics gradually became aware of their situation, and they desired to return to their origin (muốn trở về với nguồn cội), live harmoniously with the nation, and follow the course of national culture (Nguyễn 1999: 37).

Influenced by such research as that of Nguyễn Hồng Dương, Trần Văn Nhàn, a lecturer at the University of Arts and Culture of the Military, changed from employing the term Vietnamization to using the concept of localization (bản địa hóa) when he discussed Marian devotion in a Catholic village in Nghệ An province (Trần 2017: 51–55). In his doctoral dissertation, he also analyzed the localization of the Virgin Mary in Vietnam (Trần 2022). That said, the main statements in his paper and dissertation relied heavily on Nguyễn Hồng Dương’s argument about the Vietnamization of the Virgin Mary.

Nguyễn Hồng Dương, wrote about the relationship between Mother Goddess worship and Catholicism in the years following Đổi Mới, a time when there was a new interest in Mother Goddess religion and an attempt by scholars to demonstrate that this was a particularly distinct aspect of Vietnamese culture. By basing his ideas on a new view about the importance of Mother Goddess worship to explain the historical relationship between this worship and Marian devotion, Nguyễn Hồng Dương produced arguments that relied on a great deal of speculation. He also tended to posit an essentialized Vietnamese cultural identity that could play a primary role in directing the Vietnamization of Catholicism. This point of view reflects a primordial approach that argues that each nation possesses a fixed identity that can control foreign elements in the process of interaction.

Meanwhile, some overseas Vietnamese scholars have shown an interest in examining the Marian devotion of Vietnamese Catholics. Peter C. Phan, a Catholic scholar in the United States, argues that the Marian piety of Vietnamese Catholics was fostered by many factors such as the dogma of the Catholic Church, the Catholic tradition of Marian devotion, folk belief in the role of the Virgin Mary as a medium of God, and encouragement from the Catholic hierarchy and congregations (Phan 2003: 99). From this point of view, Peter C. Phan produced a new argument that Marian piety in Vietnam was promoted by a series of outside factors. As a theologian, Phan tried to use Vietnamese cultural resources to create a local theology of Mary. To do so, he employed Vietnamese cultural resources to render Marian devotion under the category of Vietnamese Mariology. This, Phan stated, could help theologians to imagine Mary in the course of Vietnamese culture (2003: 103).

Putting aside the specific issue of the influence of Mother Goddess worship on Marian piety, Peter C. Phan argued that Marian devotion in Vietnam developed in both Vietnamese cultural and religious contexts. In terms of culture, he contended that Vietnamese women were historically very powerful in politics and family life and that this facilitated the spread of Marian piety among Vietnamese people (2003: 106). Peter C. Phan even said that the devotion of Mary as a powerful woman can inspire Vietnamese women to counter the patriarchalism of Confucianism in Vietnamese culture and to achieve equality (2003: 107). Furthermore, Peter C. Phan considered that Vietnamese Catholic devotion to the Virgin Mary was also “a natural extension of their love of and devotion to the merciful Quan Âm Thị Kính (a version of Guan-yin of Vietnamese Buddhism)” (2003: 105). He assumed that Vietnamese Catholic devotees to Our Lady of La Vang had a close relationship with Buddhists since early times, in part because Buddhists reportedly once offered their pagoda to Catholics to transform it into a Marian shrine in La Vang (Phan 2003: 107). That said, such an argument is assumed from folk stories instead of basing on actual historical facts.

Thao Nguyen, at Santa Clara University in the United States, has endeavored to combine the points of view of both Nguyễn Hồng Dương and Peter C. Phan to generate a novel perspective on Marian devotion in Vietnam in which he conceptualizes Marian devotion under the terms of “transformation” and “indigenization.” On the one hand, Thao Nguyen agrees that Marian devotion in Vietnam has been influenced by the Catholic Church, Western missionaries, and local Catholics (Nguyen 2017a: 192). On the other hand, he argues that Marian devotion has also been strengthened by the Mother Goddess worship which is considered by some scholars to represent a prominent expression of a feminine characteristic in Vietnamese culture (2017a: 193). In addition, Thao Nguyen examines Jeremy Clarke’s work on the influence of Marian portraits on Guanyin’s image in China in the thirteenth century. He also addresses Trang Thanh Hiền’s research on the Vietnamese version of Guanyin, Quan Âm Thị Kính. Thao Nguyen then posits that the representation of Our Lady of La Vang had a close relation to Guanyin in Vietnam (2017a: 195). He concludes by seeing the indigenization of Our Lady of La Vang as a continuous reference to both Mother Goddess worship and Guanyin devotion (2017b: 186).

In making these arguments, Thao Nguyen did not provide as clear evidence as Jeremy Clarke did in his research on the interrelation between the depictions of Guanyin and the Virgin Mary in Chinese Catholic art. Thao Nguyen also did not show any actual relationship between Guanyin and Mary in Vietnam when he followed the research findings of Trang Thanh Hiền. Such a point of view of Thao Nguyen thus is based on assumed connections.

According to Thao Nguyen, the indigenization of Our Lady of La Vang was either a rediscovery by the Catholic Church of Vietnamese cultural foundations or an effective missionary strategy of the Church to achieve its propagation of the faith in the postcolonial context of Vietnamese culture and religion. He especially emphasized the process of the indigenization of the statue of Our Lady of La Vang. He says that the transformation of Mary’s presentation was first carried out by overseas Vietnamese Catholics in the United States (Nguyen 2017b: 182). It was then carried out by Catholics in Vietnam. Thao Nguyen additionally noticed that Asian bishops promoted the building of local churches after the Second Vatican Council, thus influencing the localization of Our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam. Thien-Huong T. Ninh also made the claim that the Vietnamization of the depiction of Our Lady of La Vang was started by Vietnamese-American Catholics, and this representation then influenced Vietnamese Catholics in Vietnam in the 1990s (Ninh 2017). This point of view shows that the indigenization/Vietnamization of Our Lady of La Vang was a construction of Catholics.

Pointing to factors that facilitated Our Lady of La Vang’s localization in Vietnam, Thien-Huong T. Ninh just briefly stated that “religious persecutions, continuing political conflicts, and poverty under which the Virgin Mary emerged have reconstituted her into uniquely Vietnamese religious icon” (Ninh 2017: 64). To be fair, the specific research scope of Thien-Huong T. Ninh was to focus on the Vietnamization of Our Lady of La Vang in the Vietnamese-American community, so she had to highlight her main subject. With such a purpose, Thien-Huong T. Ninh could not inquire comprehensively about local agents that had participated in or influenced the indigenization of Our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam. As a result, in her work, the role of Vietnamese-American Catholics, especially the role of sculptor artist Van Nhan, became dominant in the process of creating a new statute of Our Lady of La Vang for both Vietnamese American and Vietnamese Catholics in the 1990s.

Having highlighted the significant contributions of the above scholars, we put forward in this chapter a different argument, namely, that the localization of Our Lady of La Vang is not ultimately a natural return to Vietnamese cultural roots or is determined by what has been put forth as a tradition of highlighting the female in Vietnamese culture. Additionally, this localization of Our Lady of La Vang should not be mainly investigated in terms of visual presentation and efforts of outside agents. Instead, we argue that the localization process of Our Lady of La Vang was generated through the collective efforts of both Catholics and non-Catholics from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1990s. This localization process encompassed both tangible and intangible aspects, and it was driven by many inside and outside factors that were intertwined together. First, the myths, folk stories, and written documents about Our Lady of La Vang created an indigenous imagination of her. Along with that, the establishment of more convenient transportation and the ritualization of pilgrimage festivals prompted flocks of local pilgrims to visit the shrine of Our Lady of La Vang. Vietnamese Catholics then considered Our Lady of La Vang as an essential element in their religious identity, and they even referred to her as the Mother of Vietnam (Mẹ Việt Nam). Finally, the transformation of her visual presentation into the appearance of a Vietnamese woman was like a climax of multiple localizing processes: the creation of local perceptions developed from local stories, processes of inculturation, and the development of national sentiments.

6.2 Oral Stories and Documents About Our Lady of La Vang

Before the twentieth century, as the research of Charles Keith has demonstrated, the religious practices of Vietnamese Catholics were “primarily oral, with prayers, songs, and stories transmitted through homilies during mass or in catechism classes” (2012: 121). At the turn of the twentieth century in Vietnam, writers began to document more information about Catholic practices in general, and Marian devotion in particular.

In the case of Our Lady of La Vang, one of the earliest records appeared in 1900 in a publication of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris (Société des Missions-Étrangères de Paris), a Catholic missionary congregation based in France. This document recorded that a shrine in honor of the Virgin Mary in La Vang was destroyed in 1885 during a period of persecution, so the apostolic vicar of Northern Cochin, which was later renamed the apostolic vicariate of Hue in 1924, called Catholics to build a new one (Anonymous 1900: 170). Relying on the account of a certain priest Bonin in Quảng Trị, this 1900 French document recorded that the eighth of August was fixed as the day for organizing a great procession of Our Lady of La Vang, but the document did not mention which specific year. That great festival attracted roughly 12,000 Christians. With regard to the history of devotion to the Virgin Mary in the La Vang site, the 1900 French document estimated that this occurred roughly 100 years earlier (Anonymous 1900: 170–171).

In 1901, the Annals of the Society of Foreign Missions, a periodical published by the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris published a paper on Our Lady of La Vang by an anonymous author, although some Catholics guess that this author was the same priest Bonin, that examined Our Lady of La Vang in greater detail. According to this document, approximately 100 years earlier, Catholics in Cổ Vưu parish in Quảng Trị Province carried an image of the Virgin Mary when they took refuge at a place called La Vang in a dense forest at a time when Catholics were being persecuted. They gathered in a poor cottage to pray and ask Mary to protect them from a plague, and tigers in the forest. One night, a lady of incredible beauty appeared before these believers. Dressed in white, surrounded by light, and with two children were standing nearby, she softly talked to these believers and said: “My children, whatever you have asked me, I will grant it to you, and henceforth all those who come here to pray me, I will grant them [their wishes]” (Anonymous 1901: 274).

Such a story was supposedly based on oral transmission that emanated from “tradition” (Anonymous 1901: 274). This document also explained why Our Lady of La Vang became well known. This was because of an oral story about barren women in Annam, the name at that time for the area of what is now central Vietnam, who received the grace of fertility from Our Lady of La Vang. After local people had heard this story, they visited her to beg for such grace. The account in this document states that, like in ancient Judea, fertility is very important for Vietnamese. They would be proud if they could become parents of large families with many children. In contrast, sterility was considered a serious misfortune for couples. Among new Catholic followers at that time, there was a young couple who were able to bear a child after praying to Our Lady of La Vang. In the years that followed, there were persecutions of Catholics in the region, but this couple did not apostatize. Our Lady of La Vang was additionally known as a protector of believers from wild beasts in the forest. When Catholics crossed through the forest, they only needed to chant a single invocation to Our Lady of La Vang and this could help them to avoid encounters with tigers (Anonymous 1901: 275–276).

This document also described a ritual to honor Our Lady of La Vang held during the first great pilgrimage festival on 8 August, but again, without identifying the specific year. At night, children in white dresses held torches in their hands and performed dances and sang hymns, and they then traced shapes of the cross and monograms of Jesus and Mary. Meanwhile, other participants prayed by singing songs. Bishop Caspar of the apostolic vicariate of Northern Cochin used the official language of the Church (Latin) to bless pilgrims. Pilgrims enthusiastically followed the ritual whether they understood that language or not (Anonymous 1901: 276–277).

Relying on the 1901 French document, many later Vietnamese Catholic writers said that the year for the first pilgrimage festival of Our Lady of La Vang was 1901 (Nguyễn 1970; Tòa Tổng giám mục Huế 1998; Hồng n.d.), while some others, such as Trần Quang Chu, argued that it could be 1900 because the 1900 French document also referred to the words “this year” for saying about the year completing the new church in La Vang (Trần 2019). However, identifying in which exact year the first great festival pilgrimage of Our Lady of La Vang occurred is difficult as these two early records did not refer to the specific year of this event.

Most local people at that time were not able to read the narrative of Our Lady of La Vang written in these French documents. They thus only knew about her from oral stories rather than from such documents in a foreign language. Later, in 1930, Catholic priest Joseph T. V. Trang (Trần Văn Trang) published a book in Vietnamese about Our Lady of La Vang entitled Revered Written Traces of Our Lady of La Vang (Tự tích tôn kính Đức Mẹ La Vang).

In this book, Trần Văn Trang made reference to the 1901 paper in the Annals of the Society of Foreign Missions and he also incorporated other stories about Our Lady of La Vang. Officially published in 1930, the book had been accepted by the Catholic authorities of the Hue Diocese to print in 1923 and was already known by pilgrims to La Vang before it was published. According to Trang, though many people in the apostolic vicariate of Hue were devoted to Our Lady of La Vang, they did not really know her past achievements or deeds (sự tích). He thus wished to document this information for future generations (Trần 1930: 3). To compile information about the achievements of Our Lady of La Vang, Trần Văn Trang relied on the 1901 French document as well as religious odes (hát vãn) from La Vang and stories retold by old priests and elders who lived near the La Vang site. He also personally visited the Lang Vang site and described the landscape there (Trần 1930: 3).

After presenting a poem and an ode for Our Lady of La Vang, Trần Văn Trang arranged stories about her into two sections in his book. The first section contains information about the apparition of Our Lady of La Vang. The second one talks about the graces of Our Lady of La Vang. Trang said that elders and older priests relied on oral stories from ancestors to recount the apparition of Our Lady of La Vang (Trần 1930: 8). According to both Trần Văn Trang’s 1930 book and the 1901 French document, Our Lady of La Vang appeared with two angels (incarnated as two children). Trang also said that according to oral stories, the Catholics of Cổ Vưu fled from the unrest caused by literati (văn thân). Although the French document and Trần Văn Trang say that this took place approximately a century earlier, in fact, this is a reference to a movement that began in the 1860s following the signing of the Treaty of Saigon, a treaty which granted the French three provinces in the Mekong Delta. Literati in the area to the north of the capital, Hue, expressed their opposition to this development by attacking Catholic villages under the motto of “pacify the Westerners and kill the heretics” (bình Tây sát tả).

According to Trần Văn Trang’s account, around 50–70 Catholics from Cổ Vưu moved across the mountains to look for a place of refuge. They chose a level area where there was a large tree that had lush foliage. The tree as such was a home for many birds. This also created shade for people to take rest and enjoy the songs of the birds. Pagans believed in the tree spirit there, so they often came and prayed to that spirit to protect them from accidents (Trần 1930: 7). On the other hand, Catholics built a cottage near the tree, and they placed an altar in this cottage with a paper image of the Virgin Mary holding her infant son, as well as a light and some other articles. The cottage in turn became a place for Catholics to pray to the Mother of God. However, they practiced their religion in a setting where they were suffering from plague and the threat of attack from wild animals. Tigers from the forest often came and disturbed their life. Although the cottage was subsequently burned by literati, the altar and light to venerate Our Lady of La Vang continued to exist there. As the literati left the La Vang site, believers from far away saw a light and heard hymn singing at the place where the cottage used to exist. This was reportedly witnessed by many pagans (Trần 1930: 7–9).

Trần Văn Trang stated that with the end of persecution and the threat of tiger attacks, people began to flock to the Our Lady of La Vang site. These visitors wished Our Lady of La Vang would grant them many blessings such as fertility, health, and buffaloes. In addition, oral stories about the deeds of Our Lady of La Vang began to circulate, two of which were particularly famous. The first story was about a female cloth merchant (mụ bán vải). In this story, Our Lady of La Vang incarnated as a customer to buy cloth for the church. After an elderly couple witnessed this miracle, they reported it to a priest in Cổ Vưu. This priest believed that the Virgin Mary had selected the La Vang site to grant graces. The story was then retold to other people, and they thus believed in the sacredness of Our Lady of La Vang (Trần 1930: 10–11).

The second story is called “On the Origins of the Person who Picked Leaves at La Vang” (Về gốc tích người ta đến hái lá tại La Vang). In this story, Our Lady of La Vang tells a sick woman to pick leaves at the La Vang site for medical treatment (Trần 1930: 12–13). The tree mentioned in Trần Văn Trang’s account of this story was a banyan tree (cây đa). Believing this story, many pilgrims visited the La Vang site to pick leaves from the banyan tree in front of the La Vang church. They then cut branches and peeled off the bark of this tree. As the banyan tree withered, pilgrims started plucking leaves of other trees like one known as the La Vang tree (cây Lá Vằng) and even collected grasses from the La Vang church’s garden. They believed these leaves and grasses were able to treat health problems (Trần 1930: 12–13).

According to Trần Văn Trang, as the La Vang site received many visitors, these people offered money to contribute to constructing a large church. Three priests, referred to as Bonnard (cố Bổn), Patinier (cố Kinh), and Bonin (cố Ninh), respectively, built the church with an interior area large enough to hold around 500–600 people and two high towers. That church was at the place where the apparition of Our Lady of La Vang was said to have occurred, and with the church’s front facing the banyan tree. According to Trần Văn Trang, the church was built in that location based on information in the oral stories of the followers. Meanwhile, a statue of Our Lady of La Vang in the form of Mary holding her infant son was placed at a location where Our Lady of La Vang had reportedly once stepped (Trần 1930: 13).

For the second section of the book, Trần Văn Trang compiled a collection of stories about the graces of Our Lady of La Vang. These stories included one story previously recorded in the 1901 French document about Our Lady of La Vang granting a local couple fertility. Trần Văn Trang, however, added specific details about the couple such as their names (the husband was Đôn, and the wife was Phương) and their address (at Đồng Bàu, Quảng Trị Province) (Trần 1930: 23). He also recorded other stories to illustrate the graces of Our Lady of La Vang. For instance, Our Lady of La Vang reportedly cured the eyes of one person in Saigon (Trần 1930: 23–24), exculpated Nguyễn Khôi Kì, a non-Catholic (Trần 1930: 25–26), and granted fertility to Nguyễn Hữu Bài, a member of the royal court (Trần 1930: 26–27).

Catholic priest J. B. Hướng (Huỳnh Tịnh Hướng) from Chợ Lớn, now in Hồ Chí Minh City, visited the La Vang site in 1923 and said that the above book by Trần Văn Trang was waiting to be printed. With the aim of providing information about Our Lady of La Vang to many more people (Hướng 1923a: 120), J. B. Hướng wrote a story about Our Lady of La Vang and the La Vang site. This story drew on information from Trần Văn Trang’s yet-to-be-published book as well as his own experiences during his trip to the La Vang site. This story was published under the title “Pilgrimage Visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of La Vang” (Đi viếng cung thánh Đức Mẹ La Vang) in the Southern Diocese (Nam Kỳ địa phận) in 1923 (Hướng 1923a, 1923b, 1923c, 1923d, 1923e, 1923f, 1923g, 1923h, 1923i, 1923j, 1923k, 1923l, 1923m, 1923n, 1923o, 1923p, 1923q and 1923r).

Hoàng Mai Rĩnh, a Catholic in Tonkin, the northern region of Vietnam, also cited some stories from Trần Văn Trang’s work in his diary about his journey by train from the Hanoi Diocese to the La Vang site in 1929. When the train went across La Khê, and then came to Tân Ấp, passengers on the train saw a big statue of Mary holding her infant son, and they assumed that she was Our Lady of La Vang, however, that was not the La Vang site (Hoàng 1931: 6). Once standing on the La Vang site, Hoàng Mai Rĩnh learned about the stories of the graces of Our Lady of La Vang documented by Trần Văn Trang. He was also informed that Trang’s book was sold to pilgrims there (Hoàng 1931: 52). Hoàng Mai Rĩnh also employed oral stories to record that Our Lady of La Vang had appeared as an apparition holding her infant son (Hoàng 1931: 45 and 48).

After the ninth great pilgrimage festival of Our Lady of La Vang in 1928, the second Vietnamese bishop, Hồ Ngọc Cẩn, said that the La Vang site was a veneration place for both Catholics and non-Catholics because whoever went there to pray, all received a favorable response (hữu cầu tất ứng), nonetheless, he noted that the history of this site was still ambiguous (Hồ 1929a: 53). In an attempt to look for a historical account of the La Vang site and Our Lady of La Vang as well, Bishop Cẩn collected and revised oral references to Our Lady of La Vang, and then published such oral references first with the title “Written Traces of La Vang” (La Vang tự tích) in the Southern Diocese in 1929 (Hồ 1929a, b), and he later compiled these writings into the book Odes of the Deeds of La Vang (La Vang sự tích vãn) in 1932 (Trần 2020; Nguyễn n.d.: 297).

Hồ Ngọc Cẩn wrote that according to oral stories, there was a banyan tree in La Vang, and that nearby this tree non-Catholic people (bên lương) initially set up a cottage temple for spirit and Buddha worship (thờ thần Phật) and that this place was called a “holy site” (chỗ linh hoàng) (Hồ 1929a: 54). However, one day the Mother of God (Bà bên đạo) through extraordinary miracles appeared and forced these spirits away from. As a result, non-Catholics ceded the place for Catholics to pray to the Mother of God (Đức Bà) (Hồ 1929a: 54). Hồ Ngọc Cẩn himself confessed that no one knew whose stories and poems were recorded in his book, and when they had been composed. He surmised that these narratives had existed since before the first great pilgrimage festival (Hồ 1929a: 53). Since that festival, Bishop Cẩn argued, people had added information about the church of La Vang and the procession of Our Lady of La Vang in 1901 to the odes of La Vang (Hồ 1929a: 53).

According to Hồ Ngọc Cẩn, there was no village named “La Vang” found in old cadastral records. Relying on oral stories, he assumed that “La Vang” could be another way of calling “Lá Vằng” (also the name of a hamlet with many Lá Vằng trees) (Hồ 1929b: 119). He guessed that in the time of persecution under Emperor Tự Đức, there were Catholics who took refuge in the La Vang site (Hồ 1929b: 119–120). Though unclear about the history of the oral narratives about Our Lady of La Vang, Hồ Ngọc Cẩn noted that her deeds had been transformed into religious performances (Hồ 1929a: 53; Nguyễn 1970: 38; Hồng n.d.: 34).

Like the anonymous author of the 1901 French document, J. B. Roux, a missionary in Hue, published the paper The Pilgrimage to Our Lady of La Vang (Le Pèlerinage de Notre-Dame de Lavang) in the Annals of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris in 1933, in which he reconfirmed that the information about Our Lady of La Vang was based on “tradition” rather than written records and that there was no way to determine what was actual historical fact and what came from popular imagination (Roux 1933: 112). An example of this was information that Roux provided about the origin of La Vang. According to Roux, oral stories explained that originally people cultivated potatoes, cassava, and rice in the valley where La Vang is located, and that at night they gathered to chase tigers, boars, and stags away from their fields and huts. The name of this area then came to be known as “La Vang,” which Roux noted in Vietnamese can mean “resounding clamor” (clameur rententissante) (Roux 1933: 112).

Roux states further that these stories also talked about how there was a large tree in the valley, and people often rested under its shade when they worked in or crossed the forest. Pagans worshipped the spirit of this tree to ask the spirit to protect them from danger, especially from tigers and disease, while Catholics prayed and recited the Rosary to implore the Blessed Virgin there. The pagans were frightened by the religious practices of the Catholics, and consequently abandoned the place. The Catholics then put additional objects of worship there, such as an image of the Blessed Virgin, and continued to worship Our Lady of La Vang. On the occasion of the procession of Our Lady of La Vang, according to J. B. Roux, some pagans thus whispered to each other: “This Lady is ours, but the Catholics took over” (Roux 1933: 113).

Roux also said that according to tradition, Catholics from Cổ Vưu took refuge and gathered in a poor cottage, rather than under a large tree, and prayed before a simple image of Mary during a time of persecution. Roux guessed that this could have happened during the time of the Tây Sơn Rebellion at the end of the eighteenth century. The story of Mary’s apparition in La Vang documented by Roux has the same content as the 1901 French document. Roux also again explained that Our Lady of La Vang became popular among local people because she was believed to grant fertility. Roux also restated the information that a large family with many children was not only a joy but a great pride for Annamese couples, and that a sterile union was considered an extreme misfortune. Finally, Roux stated that the devotion to Our Lady of La Vang spread across Indochina and that flocks of believers visited La Vang (Roux 1933: 113–114).

The aforementioned writers mostly relied on oral stories and referenced each other to document information about Our Lady of La Vang. These authors, however, acknowledged that they were unable to determine what the actual historical facts were in these oral narratives of Our Lady of La Vang. Though historically ambiguous, the narratives were transmitted over time, and starting in 1900, the oral stories of Our Lady of La Vang were documented with some differing details. For instance, some writers said that Mary had appeared near a banyan tree with her infant son while others did not mention this. In terms of the time when the apparition of Our Lady of La Vang took place, Trần Văn Trang referred to oral stories to argue that this apparition took place during the time of the literati attacks on Catholics in the 1860s and 1870s, while Roux guessed the time was around the end of the eighteenth century. We, therefore, cannot determine when exactly the apparition of Our Lady of La Vang took place at the La Vang site, if her apparition may have been claimed at different times, when oral stories about her began to be told, or even in which exact year the first great pilgrimage festival of Our Lady of La Vang took place. What we can see, however, is that these stories created a biography of Our Lady of La Vang in which her apparition and grace were directed first at a group of local vulnerable Catholics, and then expanded to both other Catholics and non-Catholics.

Alongside the process of documenting stories about Our Lady of La Vang, the development of transportation, particularly the railway, helped pilgrims in remote areas to be able to visit the shrine of Our Lady of La Vang and to participate in the triennial great pilgrimage festival. In fact, for the great pilgrimage festival of Our Lady of La Vang, the railway agency changed its schedule to accommodate the pilgrims. In 1910, priest Léopold Cadière negotiated with a railway agency to arrange two rounds of the train to pick up around 4000 Catholic pilgrims from Phủ Cam and Kim Long in the Hue Diocese and to deliver them to La Vang (Nguyễn n.d.: 42–43). The ninth great pilgrimage festival in 1928 welcomed participants from Tonkin, Annam, and Quinam (Nguyễn n.d.: 51). The railway agency at that time offered cheap tickets for pilgrims to La Vang, and a total of 1566 such tickets were sold to passengers at the Hue railway station alone (Nguyễn n.d.: 52). In 1932, the Hanoi Midday News (Hà Thành ngọ báo), a newspaper in Tonkin, reported that on the occasion of the great festival of Our Lady of La Vang in Quảng Trị province, the Northern railway agency would give promotions to individual passengers who wanted to undertake the pilgrimage to the La Vang site. The price reduction was twenty-five percent for a round-trip ticket. Pilgrims could buy tickets at the railway stations on the lines from Hanoi to Hue and Hue to Tourane (i.e., Đà Nẵng) (Anonymous 1932: 2).

The narratives of Our Lady of La Vang, moreover, were repeated by Catholic storytellers and writers on the occasions of the great pilgrimage festival. In such a way, recognition of Our Lady of La Vang came to be gradually embedded in the minds of Vietnamese Catholics and whatever imagined and actual elements made up those narratives became intertwined. Eventually, many Vietnamese Catholic priests and writers actively made use of Catholic journals in the Vietnamese language to document stories about Our Lady of La Vang. Among them, there were such newspapers and journals as Southern Diocese, the Journal of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (Nguyệt san Đức Mẹ hằng cứu giúp) and the Journal of Our Lady of La Vang (Nguyệt san Đức Mẹ La Vang).

In 1955, the publishing house of the Journal of Our Lady of Perpetual Help published a book that selected and compiled many documents about Our Lady of La Vang. Most of the contents of this book were collected by Nguyễn Linh Kinh who was a priest of La Vang parish from 1948 to 1955. The book presented the history of Our Lady of La Vang and the various miracles that she had granted to believers (Hồng 1955). During the great pilgrimage festival in 1961, Hà Châu, a reporter, wrote an article entitled the “Apparition of La Vang” (La Vang linh hiển) that included many details with historical information and fragments of oral narratives to document information about Our Lady of La Vang. The writer even added new information about the miraculous interventions of Our Lady of La Vang in the 1950s (Hà 1961).

In addition to written accounts of Our Lady of La Vang, there were also poems that documented and praised her deeds. One author, for instance, recorded in 1961 that visitors could buy texts that included such poems when they were on the train to the La Vang site (Tam 1961: 28). One such work was a collection of poems entitled Here, La Vang (Đây, La Vang). This work embraced both mythological and historical dimensions, and vividly reenacted the past of Our Lady of La Vang, thus bringing her to life for readers and listeners (Tam 1961: 29).

Finally, as followers spread far beyond La Vang, in addition to recording information about the graces that Our Lady of La Vang performed at the La Vang site, Catholics in other places also recounted the graces that they believed they received from her. For instance, Catholic priest Phạm Đình Khiêm reported to archbishop Ngô Đình Thục that Our Lady of La Vang granted graces to a Catholic at a site in the outskirts of Saigon, and that this person recovered from an illness after drinking leaves of Our Lady of La Vang (lá Đức Mẹ) (Phạm 1961: 17). Many such stories were also recorded in Catholic journals and newspapers to talk about the graces of Our Lady of La Vang.

6.3 Discourses About Our Lady of La Vang as Mother of Vietnam

In the above written documents, Our Lady of La Vang is called by various Vietnamese terms: “Chúa Bà” (Lady Lord), “Đức Mẹ Chúa Trời” (Mother of God) and “Nữ vương Việt Nam” (Queen of Vietnam). However, Vietnamese Catholics recognize that Our Lady of La Vang is not a distinct figure from the Virgin Mary, and her apparition at the La Vang site is also one of various Marian apparitions over the world. Indeed, on the occasion of the great pilgrimage festival in 1961, Nguyễn Văn Bình, Archbishop of Saigon, even said that La Vang was not the only place where Catholic pilgrims were able to find the Mother of God (Vũ 1961: 6), given that she was worshipped in many other places in Vietnam.

While Our Lady of La Vang is recognized by Vietnamese Catholics to be the same Virgin Mary who is worshipped by Catholics around the world, the stories that were created about Our Lady of La Vang, and which we discussed in the previous section, linked her apparition and graces with a local setting. Indeed, the title, “Our Lady of La Vang” (Notre-Dame de La-vang), and its Vietnamese equivalent, which literally means the “Honored Mother of La Vang” (Đức Mẹ La Vang), distinguish this figure from other versions of the Virgin Mary. Further, it is also clear that a sensibility of Our Lady of La Vang as a figure of national pride for Vietnamese Catholics and even as a “Mother of Vietnam” (Mẹ Việt Nam) emerged in Catholic discourses in the twentieth century.

According to the Hue episcopal see, in 1901, Bishop Marie-Antoine Caspar, whose Vietnamese name was Lộc, of the Hue Diocese issued a regulation that the great pilgrimage festival of Our Lady of La Vang would take place once every three years at the time of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (normally in the middle of August) (Tòa Tổng giám mục Huế 1998: 20). This decision set the foundation for the ritualization of Our Lady of La Vang and created a great religious event to gather large devout believers in the La Vang site. Although there is little information about the early years of the great pilgrimage festival, Catholic writers have confirmed there was a second festival in 1904 and a third in 1907 (Tòa Tổng giám mục Huế 1998: 20; Nguyễn n.d.: 39). The fourth great pilgrimage festival took place in 1910, and at this festival, the participants included local cultural elements such as Annamese music (nhạc An Nam) and a red and gold colored palanquin (kiệu sơn son thếp vàng) to celebrate Our Lady of La Vang (Nguyễn n.d.: 43). The festivals later brought together pilgrims from many areas into a network of devotees of Our Lady of La Vang. Through such events Vietnamese Catholics appear to have developed a strong sense of pride in Our Lady of La Vang and she became a means for them to define themselves in comparison with others. For instance, at the great pilgrimage festival in 1938, a Vietnamese Catholic priest by the name of Tin came to the pulpit and spoke to pilgrims saying that the Marian apparition in La Vang gave back national pride and an equal position in relationships with powerful Western countries, and that the Marian apparition in La Vang also demonstrated that this site received more graces than other places in the world (Nghĩa 1938: 559).

As the shrine of Our Lady of La Vang became a more famous pilgrimage destination, Catholic authorities in the Hue Diocese desired to construct facilities to meet the need for religious practices there. They tended to refer to Our Lady of La Vang as the mother of everyone in Vietnam. On 18 October 1924, René Morineau, whose Vietnamese name was Trung, an apostolic missionary in Quảng Trị province, issued a letter in Vietnamese to solicit financial contributions for building various facilities at the La Vang site such as a new shrine for worship, along with guest houses for pilgrims, and houses for priests and church keepers. Although pilgrims had offered money to the church at the annual procession events, this was not enough to erect such facilities, as much had been spent on religious services. René Morineau stated to believers that instead of renovating the old church, they should build a new one, for the Lady who was the common mother of every Catholic from the South to the North (Mẹ chung mọi người giáo hữu khắp Nam Bắc). He even used the proverb “One tree could not amount to anything, three of them together could build up a high mountain” (Một cây làm chẳng nên non, ba cây dụm lại lên hòn núi cao) to inspire every Catholic to participate in the construction of the new shrine. Morineau emphasized that Catholiclics are servants of one God (tôi một Chúa), and children of one Mother (con một Mẹ) as well (Morineau 1924: 2).

The La Vang site continued to be developed by the Catholic authorities of the Hue Diocese, particularly after they set up a more effective administration of religious practices there. In 1928, bishop Allys appointed Paul Võ Văn Thới as the first priest to take care of La Vang parish. Later, priests of the La Vang parish and Vietnamese bishops kept improving the position of the La Vang site, and tried to preserve the statue of Our Lady of La Vang during the years of the First Indochina War (1946–1954). After the Geneva Accords of 1954, around 676,348 Catholics in the North moved to the South (Hansen 2009: 180). One of the reasons Catholics did so was because they believed in a rumor that said, “The Virgin Mary had gone South and those who refused to follow her would oppose God’s will and risk damnation” (Denney 1990: 271). La Vang shrine was located in South Vietnam, around 30 km from the seventeenth parallel where the country was supposed to be temporarily divided under the Geneva Accords. Our Lady of La Vang thus gained new significance in this political context. Catholic authorities in South Vietnam even considered Our Lady of La Vang as a symbol of opposition to atheism. Hồng Phúc, a Catholic priest, referred to the shrine of Our Lady of La Vang as a watchtower and a fortress that could hold back “the red wave of atheism” (làn sóng đỏ vô thần) (Hồng 1961: 235). Trần Văn Tường, a former priest at La Vang, said that Vietnam was suffering and divided, and that the La Vang shrine was a gathering place for pilgrims to pray to the Mother to save the nation (Bảo 1961: 12). To reinforce the position of the Catholic Church against atheism, bishops in the South requested that the shrine of Our Lady of La Vang be called a national consecrated shrine (Đền thờ toàn quốc khấn dâng) at the meeting of bishops in 1959 (Dell’acqua 1961: 28).

Indeed, after 1954, Our Lady of La Vang came to be recognized by the upper levels of both the global and Vietnamese Catholic churches. From 1955 to 1959, three cardinals visited and prayed to Our Lady of La Vang. On 21 February 1959, for instance, Vietnamese Catholics warmly welcomed cardinal Agagianian, Pro-Perfect of the Propagation of the Faith, to the La Vang site (Hồng n.d.: 78). This cardinal later requested that the Vatican Holy See consecrate the Shrine of Our Lady of La Vang as a minor basilica (Hồng n.d.: 79). Meanwhile, the Vietnamese Catholic bishops held a conference and consecrated Our Lady of La Vang as a shrine for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and as the National Marian Shrine (Trung tâm Thánh mẫu Toàn quốc) as well. The Vietnamese Catholic authorities then carried out a project to enlarge the La Vang site (Hồng n.d.: 86).

Among the bishops in South Vietnam, Ngô Đình Thục emerged as a very influential religious leader (Jacobs 2006: 89). The elder brother of Ngô Đình Diệm, the president of the Republic of Vietnam, or what is commonly referred to as South Vietnam, Thục actively worked to consolidate the position of Our Lady of La Vang. He substantially contributed to legitimizing the identity of Our Lady of La Vang in the Vietnamese Catholic community. Thục sought to establish Our Lady of La Vang as a common religious symbol for all Vietnamese. Through the “Venerabilium Nostrorum” decree of 24 November 1960, Pope John XXIII officially established the Vietnamese Catholic hierarchy. Three archdioceses were also designated at Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon. In 1960, Ngô Đình Thục was appointed to become the first archbishop of the Hue Archdiocese. As archbishop, Thục issued a letter to summon both Catholics and non-Catholics to participate in the great pilgrimage festival of La Vang. In the letter, he referred to Vietnam as a great family, but one that was divided into North and South. Thục called all Vietnamese to look to the common Mother, who is the Mother of God, along with the mother of human beings, and the mother of all Vietnamese regardless of their religion (Mẹ tất cả mọi người dân Việt Nam bất phân tôn giáo) (Ngô 1961: 4).

At that time, many accounts in news media mirrored Archbishop Thục’s wording and depicted Our Lady of La Vang as the “Mother of both the South and the North” (Mẹ của hai miền Nam Bắc) and the “Mother of the unity of Vietnam” (Mẹ của Việt Nam thống nhất) (Bùi 1961: 9). Such a discourse was promoted as part of the nation-building project under Ngô Đình Diệm. Catholicism enjoyed a favored position, as President Diệm and his family were Catholics. Under his government, only Catholicism was defined as a “religion,” while Buddhism was considered as an “association” (Jacobs 2006: 56). At the great pilgrimage festival in 1961, Ngô Đình Diệm himself also entrusted the future of the country to Our Lady of La Vang (Trần 1988: 127). In July 1962, the post office of South Vietnam issued a stamp of Our Lady of La Vang in which there were images of Our Lady of Victories, an image of Mary wearing a crown and holding her son who is also wearing a crown. Behind these images, there was a bamboo rush that was also a symbol in the national emblem of the Republic of Vietnam from 1957 to 1963 (Nguyễn 1970: 133–134; Trần 2021a: 80–81). Our Lady of La Vang was also repeatedly referenced in comparison with other Marian titles in foreign countries. For instance, at the great pilgrimage festival in 1961, a Catholic reporter contended that while Portugal was proud of Mother Fatima, Poland had Mother Czestochowa, and France delighted in Mother Lourdes, Vietnam possessed the La Vang site where the Queen of the Heavenly Kingdom (Nữ vương Thiên quốc) had appeared many times for the benefit of earthly people (Trần 1961: 11).

6.4 Transforming the Statue of Our Lady of La Vang into Vietnamese Style

While a perception of Our Lady of La Vang as a mother of the Vietnamese developed along with her documentation and ritualization, the localization of Our Lady of La Vang in visual art occurred later. The original presentation of Our Lady of La Vang was derived from the model of Our Lady of Victories in France. A writer named “Joseph (Annam),” writing in the Southern Diocese newspaper in 1913, said that Catholic priest Léopold Cadière, who had previously been in charge of the Cổ Vưu parish, asked an artist to make paintings of the statue of Our Lady of La Vang and the La Vang shrine before Cadière traveled to France for a short vacation (around the end of 1910) (Joseph 1913: 296 and 297). This painter was a non-Catholic artist called Nhơn (ký Nhơn) from Quảng Trị province (Josep 1913: 296). Joseph noted that the picture of the statue of Our Lady of La Vang, depicted by Nhơn, was so sophisticated and great that everyone felt thrilled and devoted to Our Lady of La Vang (Joseph 1913: 297). When Cadière came back to the Hue Diocese, he brought along with him many copies of such a picture of Our Lady of La Vang that he had produced in France (Joseph 1913: 296).

Based on the above information, Catholic priest Nguyễn Văn Ngọc and Catholic writer Trần Quang Chu suggested that artist Nhơn was Nguyễn Khắc Nhân, a former artist of the Hue royal court, who served under Emperor Thành Thái (Nguyễn 1970: 60–61; Trần 2019). The painting of Our Lady of La Vang no longer exists, however, a painting of the La Vang Shrine is preserved in some documents, such as the book, Holy Site of La Vang (Linh địa La Vang), by priest Nguyễn Văn Ngọc and published in 1970 (Trần 2019). This painting shows that on the top of the church was an image of Our Lady of La Vang following the model of Our Lady of Victories. The only difference in this presentation was a halo around the image of Our Lady of La Vang holding her infant son (Trần 2019).

Some writers in the early twentieth century also described the church in La Vang, and what the statue of Our Lady of La Vang looked like. Trần Văn Trang, the author of a reference book on La Vang, recorded that a statue of Our Lady of La Vang holding her infant son was built at a place where there had previously been an altar dedicated to her. This account also indicates that people claimed that when Our Lady of La Vang appeared, she was holding the child Jesus, and that therefore, the statue was built in the same manner (Trần 1930: 13–14).

Such a story suggests a local inspiration for the statue, however, other accounts make it clear that this first statue was modeled after Our Lady of Victories. According to Catholic priests Nguyễn Văn Ngọc and Hồng Phúc, when the first great pilgrimage of Our Lady of La Vang took place in perhaps 1901, bishop Casper blessed the statue of Our Lady of La Vang that was modeled after the Our Lady of Victories statue in the Notre Dame des Victoires church in Paris (Nguyễn 1970: 62; Hồng n.d.: 58). When writing about La Vang in 1923, Catholic priest J.B. Hướng stated that the statue of Mary holding her son at the La Vang shrine was bought from the West (bên Tây) and was originally Our Lady of Victories (Hướng 1923j: 268). This model depicted Mary holding her son which was one of the popular portraits of Mary in France at that time. The representation of Our Lady of La Vang as a mother holding her child, therefore, mirrored the representation of Our Lady of Victories and was not related to the presentation style of Quan Âm Thị Kính in Vietnam.

From 1928 to 1945, pilgrimage activities in the La Vang site took place regularly. However, from 1946 to 1954, when the First Indochina War broke out, and in particularly starting in 1949 when La Vang came under the control of Việt Minh, many Catholics from the area then fled to other villages in Quảng Trị province. Religious practices in the La Vang site became more difficult to carry out at that time, and Catholics secretly moved the statue of Our Lady of La Vang to the Quảng Trị provincial seat in 1952 (Hồng 1955: 41–42; Nguyễn 1970: 88). On 6 December 1954, the statue of Our Lady of La Vang was taken back to the La Vang site (Hồng 1955: 45). In 1955, priest Trần Văn Tường was appointed to manage La Vang parish, he then carried out a renovation of the old church that was built in 1928 (Nguyễn 1970: 95).

In 1961, Catholic bishops in South Vietnam decided to consecrate the shrine of Our Lady of La Vang as the National Marian Shrine at a conference of bishops that was held that year in Đà Lạt. A year later, in 1962, Catholic bishops established a plan to renovate the La Vang site. According to this project, the monument to celebrate the event of the Marian apparition would be renovated with the addition of three banyan trees made of cement and steel, and an altar made of marble from Five-Element Mountain (Ngũ hành sơn) in Đà Nẵng, which the plan referred to as a symbol for Vietnam (Anonymous 1964: 85). On the altar, there would be a marble base for a statue of Our Lady of La Vang who was to be sculpted with a gentle face looking down (Anonymous 1964: 86). This statue of Our Lady of La Vang was to be depicted in the style of the Blessed Mary (Đức bà xuống ơn) which differs from the model of Our Lady of Victories (Nguyễn 2016: 475) in that she stands looking down and does not hold her infant son. That project started on 20 June 1963. In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam was assassinated, and archbishop Ngô Đình Thục, who was in Rome at the time, remained overseas. The renovation of the La Vang site had to be put on hold for a long time. Before that point, the only part of the monument to Our Lady of La Vang that had been completed was a frame in the form of banyan trees (Anonymous 1964: 86). As such, while the statue of Our Lady of La Vang had not been localized yet, the project had introduced items with local significance, such as the marble from Five-Element Mountain.

In a wider context, by the mid-twentieth century, Marian portraits were being Vietnamized by some artists who were either Catholic or non-Catholic. For instance, Nam Phong, a Catholic artist of Phát Diệm Diocese in Ninh Bình province, painted Mary as the “Vietnamese Queen in Heaven” (Nữ vương Việt Nam ngự trên trời) which was exhibited in 1953 in Phát Diệm town (Kim 2021). The painting depicted the Virgin Mary holding her infant son and wearing Vietnamese robes, and it was then brought to Rome by Lê Hữu Từ, a bishop of Phát Diệm Diocese, in that same year. This was eventually exhibited in the Foyer Phát Diệm in Rome (Kim 2021). Some other artists also portrayed Mary and Jesus with Vietnamese appearances in paintings for Christmas. Such works were the “Holy Night” (Đêm Thánh) by Nguyễn Gia Trí in 1941, and the “Christmas” (Giáng sinh) painting by Hoàng Tích Chu and Nguyễn Tiến Chung from around 1942–1943 (Nguyễn 2010; Phạm 2016). The “Vietnamization” of the Virgin Mary in terms of art, therefore, already took place at that time.

Nonetheless, an important event in the localization of the statue of Our Lady of La Vang was the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Being the most important Catholic ecclesial event in the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council issued sixteen documents (four constitutions, nine decrees, and three declarations) to direct issues concerning Catholic relationships inside and outside the Church in modern times. Among those issues, the Second Vatican Council was especially aware of the importance of inculturation during the course of evangelization. Given that, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World that this council promulgated encouraged that the Church should understand different cultures and effectively deploy materials from such cultures in order to not only “spread” but also “explain” Christian messages to people living in various settings (Paul VI 1965).

As the Catholic hierarchy promoted the above spirit of the Second Vatican Council and acknowledged the destiny of the Vietnamese Catholic Church in the country, the transformation of the Virgin Mary into a local manifestation was in keeping with efforts to integrate Catholicism into Vietnamese culture. Catholic priest Trương Bá Cần, in a paper published in 1969, questioned why Catholicism was not Vietnamized in Vietnam yet, though it had been introduced to Vietnam 300 years earlier (Trương 1969: 16). He explained that one of main reasons behind that situation could possibly be attributed to Catholic intellectuals (yếu tố trí thức) (Trương 1969: 16), those who upheld Western theological education. Relying heavily on such education and emphasizing the importance of the Vietnamese vernacular (quốc ngữ) lead to the fact that many Catholic missionaries and intellectuals underestimated local civilization and ignored the literature of the literati (văn chương thi phú của nho sĩ) in Vietnam (Trương 1969: 25–26). As a result, according to Cần’s point of view, Vietnamese Catholics could not produce statements following the Vietnamese style (lối phát biểu của người Việt Nam) (Trương 1969: 26). Starting in the early 1970s, some other Vietnamese Catholics also drew attention to the complexity of the Vietnamization of Catholicism, in the sense that it required that one first define Vietnamese characteristics (Nhà Chúa 1973: 1).

Regarding the Vietnamization of Catholic statues, an overseas Vietnamese priest, Trần Tam Tỉnh, said that there were contested debates about Western statues of the Virgin Mary in Vietnam before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Some Catholic lay intellectuals (giáo dân trí thức) even requested that the Vietnamese Catholic Church should abandon Marian pictures and statues with a Western presentation (blue eyes, pointed nose, and blonde hair), which were imported from Western countries (Trần 1974: 47). Overriding that opinion, a Catholic priest confirmed that these portraits and statues were Catholic art that transcended national boundaries. Lay people were encouraged to focus on their responsibility rather than intervening in the tasks of the Catholic hierarchy (Trần 1974: 47).

Nonetheless, some people still hoped that the Second Vatican Council would create an opportunity for the Vietnamization of Catholicism (Trần 1974: 47). Tỉnh, for instance, hoped for this, and he defined the Vietnamization of Catholicism as not an ambiguous return to the past, but instead an intentional rediscovery of the national characteristics of Vietnamese culture and art and their application in Catholic liturgy and art. This process, he argued, could help Vietnamese Catholics set themselves apart from the Western context (Trần 1974: 52).

In the case of Our Lady of La Vang, in 1968, an article in the Journal of Our Lady of Perpetual Help proposed an idea to sculpt a new statue for Our Lady of La Vang in local form. This idea was based on an argument that although the Virgin Mary was originally a Jew, after Catholicism had spread to many different parts of the world, she had been depicted in many different forms, such as Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Russian (Anonymous 1968: 267). The Virgin Mary could therefore be depicted as the Mother of Vietnam with a Vietnamese face, body, and adornments (Anonymous 1968: 267). Though we do not know whose idea this was, it is obvious that someone had already begun a quest to transform the statue of Our Lady of La Vang into a Vietnamese style.

This move to integrate the Church into Vietnamese society that was underway in South Vietnam was intensified in the years following the end of the Vietnam War. In post-1975 unified Vietnam, the Catholic authorities in Vietnam mobilized Catholics to collaborate with the new regime under the leadership of the Communist Party and contribute to building a new society (Denney 1990: 282). The Vietnamese Catholic community was represented in this process as an inextricable part of the nation (một thành phần của cộng đồng dân tộc) (Nguyễn 1976: 57).

This trend of incorporating Catholics into the nation was supported actively by Archbishop Nguyễn Văn Bình of the Saigon Archdiocese. On the occasion of the national day of Vietnam, 2 September 1975, Archbishop Bình issued a public letter to direct Catholic engagement in the course of nation-building. In this letter, he used the term “Vietnamese Catholics” (người Việt Nam Công giáo) when he called upon Catholics to affiliate with the nation and construct an earthly life (xây dựng trần thế) (Nguyễn 1975a: 8–9). The term “người Việt Nam Công giáo” in the discourse of the Vietnamese language means that Vietnamese Catholic believers are Vietnamese first and Catholics second. This could be distinct from the term “Catholic Vietnamese” (người Công giáo Việt Nam) which emphasizes the Catholic characteristic of each believer. To highlight nationality, in the greeting speech for the Conference of Unification of the Country in November 1975, Archbishop Bình said that Vietnamese unity is a natural truth because from north to south every person speaks the same language and participates in a common national culture. To set the Vietnamese Catholic community as one part of the national unity, Archbishop Bình called Vietnamese Catholics “Vietnamese Catholic compatriots” (đồng bào Việt Nam Công giáo) (Nguyễn 1975b: 2). Such a discourse stimulated the trend of Vietnamization in the Catholic community. Along with motivating Catholic affiliation with the nation, news reporters of the daily newspaper Catholicism and the Nation (Công giáo và Dân tộc) under a patriotic Catholic group also used the illustration of the Virgin Mary wearing a robe and headscarf in Vietnamese female style (Nguyễn 1975–1976: 10).

Beyond Vietnam, there were also developments in these years that promoted the inculturation of Catholicism. Starting in 1970 with the establishment of the Federation of Asian Bishop Conferences (FABC), the messages of the Second Vatican Council were promoted among Asian Catholic communities. In the first assembly in 1974, the FABC discussed how to construct a local church in the Asian indigenous contexts (Nguyen 2017b: 183). In 1980, Vietnamese bishops organized the bishop conference. This conference launched a general pastoral letter to keep promoting the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and the FABC. It called for the construction of the Church for the whole of humankind, but also motivated Catholic integration in the national context. The letter moreover urged believers to foster a lifestyle and a way of expressing their faith in the course of the national tradition. The pastoral letter required Vietnamese Catholics to understand the Bible and theology. At the same time, they were encouraged to deepen and explore the values of the traditions of every ethnic group, and then adapt these values to both their lifestyle and religion (Hội đồng Giám mục Việt Nam 2017).

Meanwhile, the great pilgrimage festivals of La Vang in 1981, 1984, and 1987 took place on a limited scale (Nguyễn n.d.: 183). However, starting around 1990, the great pilgrimage festivals of La Vang became more vibrant with thousands of participants because the Vietnamese Communist Party and the government of Vietnam implemented a more tolerant policy toward religious affairs (Nguyễn n.d.: 188). In 1993, many Vietnamese overseas Catholics visited the La Vang shrine and participated in the twenty-third great pilgrimage festival. The logo of this festival presented Our Lady of La Vang holding Jesus in her right hand. This was slightly different from the presentation of Our Lady of Victories (Nguyễn n.d.: 189; Trần 2021b). In 1994, the Holy See ordained Nguyễn Như Thể as an apostolic bishop of the Hue Archdiocese, and he was ordained as archbishop of this archdiocese in March 1998. Nguyễn Như Thể actively promoted Catholic inculturation in the La Vang site. In 1996, the logo of the festival illustrated Our Lady of La Vang as a Vietnamese woman wearing a robe and head scarf, and it depicted the baby Jesus as a Vietnamese child (Trần 2021b). This logo must been reviewed by the festival organizing committee under the leadership of bishop Thể. Participants in the festival in 1996 also wore clothes in style of the dynasties of old and performed the ritual celebration of Our Lady of La Vang like the Nam Giao ritual offering to Heaven carried out by the last Vietnamese dynasty, the Nguyễn dynasty (Trần 2021b).

Also in 1994, Vietnamese-American Catholics in Orange County made a statue of Our Lady of La Vang that is called “Our Lady of Vietnam.” This statue is in the form of a Vietnamese woman with a robe and rounded headdress. It was sculpted by a Vietnamese-American Catholic sculptor named Van Nhan (Ninh 2017: 74). The establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and Vietnam in 1995 enhanced the contacts between Vietnamese-American Catholics with their counterparts in Vietnam (Ninh 2017: 76). In this context, the exchange of ideas concerning the representation of Our Lady of La Vang occurred. Van Nhan showed the statue of “Our Lady of Vietnam” to Vietnamese priests when they visited Orange County in the mid-1990s and the information about this statue reached bishop Nguyễn Như Thể (Ninh 2017: 76–77).

The climax of the localization of Our Lady of La Vang’s representation took place in conjunction with the Vietnamese Catholic church’s preparations for the 200th anniversary of the Marian apparition at the La Vang site. Bishop Nguyễn Như Thể set three major tasks to promote Catholic inculturation with the events for the anniversary: building a new statue of Our Lady of La Vang, showcasing music and performance in liturgy, and decorating a stage for ritual performances (Trần n.d.: 232). A new statue of Our Lady of La Vang was created at this time, a time when Vietnamese Catholics acknowledged that the old statue was not suitable because it did not communicate a local sense of identity. There was a sense that a new statue should not be presented in the style of Our Lady of Victories which depicted Mary the style of a royal queen in her palace (Trần n.d.: 233). On February 24, 1998, Vietnamese bishops organized a meeting in Hanoi. They argued that the statue of Our Lady of La Vang followed the model of Our Lady of Victories in Paris and that it was no longer suitable as other models of Our Lady of La Vang had started to appear and that this would confuse believers. Vietnamese bishops demanded a new model for the statue of Our Lady of La Vang and one that must be created by a Vietnamese artist. Further, they stated that the new statute should present characteristics of both a compassionate and majestic mother (Trần 2021c).

Archbishop Nguyễn Như Thể and other Vietnamese bishops then invited Van Nhan to make a new statue of Our Lady of La Vang (Ninh 2017: 77). Beginning in March 1998, this archbishop consulted with Van Nhan through the entire process of creating a new Our Lady of La Vang statue. This bishop also shared the main ideas of the style of the new statute in which Our Lady of La Vang wears a blue robe with a yellow collar, along with a rounded scarf on her head, and light-yellow heels. She holds her son Jesus on her arm, and her head leans slightly toward his head. This shape implies that Our Lady of La Vang and her son are congenial. Our Lady of La Vang stans on green grass surrounded by white clouds while Jesus wears pink clothes with symbols of Alpha and Omega on his chest (Trần 2021c).

There were two such statues created by Van Nhan under this guidance. On July 1, 1998, Pope John Paul II blessed these statutes of Our Lady of La Vang. One of them was brought back to the US, while the other was taken to Vietnam. On August 1, 1998, the Vietnamese Bishop Conference officially recognized this statue as the official statue of Our Lady of La Vang (Trần 2021c).

6.5 Conclusion

The localization of Our Lady of La Vang was a process that involved multiple agents over the course of time. Starting in the early twentieth century, writers documented the stories of Our Lady of La Vang. These documents established details of her biography that not only gave rise to a vivid picture of Our Lady of La Vang in local communities but also brought her to the lives of local people.

Perpetuating the achievements and deeds of Our Lady of La Vang through publications and rituals developed shared knowledge. Alongside the oral stories and written documents about Our Lady of La Vang, the advance in transportation based on the railway contributed to establishing a network for devout pilgrims to visit the La Vang site. These pilgrims in turn played an active role retelling the stories of Our Lady of La Vang for the next generations, thereby revitalizing her achievements and deeds in local settings. Moreover, the writers and Catholic authorities kept discussing Our Lady of La Vang and began to refer to her as a common mother of all Vietnamese with the aim of soliciting local people to construct the La Vang shrine, serve nation-building, and establish a religious identity for Vietnamese Catholics. The discourses that emerged bonded the thoughts and emotions of Vietnamese Catholics with Our Lady of La Vang as a mother of the Vietnamese.

Such a change in the perception toward Our Lady of La Vang was a significant motivation behind the transformation of her portrait into a local form. That transformation became much more realistic after the Second Vatican Council’s messages were introduced to the Vietnamese Catholic community. Indeed, Vietnamese Catholic authorities boosted inculturation in many aspects of Catholic practices including art creation in light of this council. Here, both domestic and overseas Vietnamese Catholics recognized that her statute followed the model of Our Lady of Victories and sought to transform it into Vietnamese style, and as a Vietnamese mother. The transformation of the statue of Our Lady of La Vang was thus the product of the collective efforts of multiple agents, particularly Vietnamese Catholics from both inside and outside of Vietnam.

Further, we believe that our research has provided sufficient evidence to call into question the idea that Mother Goddess worship played a substantial role in navigating the localization/Vietnamization of Our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam during the course of history. While some scholars from the 1990s onwards strived to find out the interrelation between Mother Goddess worship and Our Lady of La Vang, there is no solid evidence that demonstrates that Mother Goddess worship facilitated the localization of Our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam.