What started with a few dozen families gathering for Mass 20 years ago in the Dulles corridor would be unrecognizable today to those Catholic pioneers of Vietnamese descent.
In 2006, Dominican Father John the Baptist Vuong Duc Nguyen began ministering to approximately 35 families in the Chantilly area, under the patronage of Our Lady of La Vang.
Other Dominican priests filled in when he left in 2012 for assignments in Calgary and Houston. Father Nguyen returned last August as the administrator of Our Lady of Vang, and was on hand to mark the mission’s 20-year anniversary at St. Veronica Church in Chantilly April 26.
“We now have 550 families with more than 1,200 attending three weekend Masses,” said Father Nguyen. “We’ve grown from the original 20 families that chose to live in Arlington as refugees in 1975, attending Mass at a small church in Annandale.”
The anniversary celebration featured a colorful procession of Our Lady of La Vang, named after a Marian apparition to a group of Catholics in La Vang, Vietnam, who were hiding in the jungle to avoid religious persecution in 1798. Women wore traditional Vietnamese clothing adorned in bright yellow and blue.
Bishop Michael F. Burbidge, who recognized the community formally as a mission in 2017, joined the procession and celebrated the Mass.
The future home of Our Lady of La Vang will be on land at the corner of Herndon Ave. and Pleasant Valley Road in Chantilly. The diocese purchased 33 wooded acres in 2021 and, three years later, an additional five acres with a house were purchased to serve as the rectory.
