Origins of the Vietnamese Community at St. Adalbert Church, St. Paul

The Vietnamese Catholic community at St. Adalbert Church in St. Paul (265 Charles Avenue) began growing in 1990, after Father Tim Kernan sponsored two Vietnamese families. Between 1990 and 2003, that community flourished due to increased immigration, a strong sense of faith, and the desire to maintain Vietnamese heritage in the youth born in Minnesota.

The Vietnamese families that settled in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood came at the end of the second wave and the beginning of the third wave of Vietnamese immigration to the US. Most immigrants in the first wave were Vietnamese military or government personnel who had worked closely with the US government during the Vietnam War and escaped after the Fall of Saigon (1975). The second wave (late 1970s) consisted of refugees escaping from communist rule, and the third (1980s–1990s) was made up of people reunited through family-sponsored programs. Two refugees in this last wave, Khuong Trieu and Thuat Nguyen, moved to Minnesota in 1989 to join the congregation at St. Adalbert after they were sponsored by Father Tim Kernan and Maggie Rein, a nun at the parish.

In the early 1990, St. Adalbert’s Vietnamese community was a mix of families sponsored by the church and those relocated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Orderly Departure Program (ODP), as well as the subprogram Humanitarian Operation (HO). The HO program was specifically for former reeducation camp prisoners to immigrate to the US.

In order to help Vietnamese families maintain their faith, Father Tim worked with a priest from St. Joseph Hien, a prominent Vietnamese Catholic Community in Minneapolis, to hold Vietnamese mass at St. Adalbert. At the time, St Joseph Hien Church celebrated the only Vietnamese-language mass in Minnesota. Starting in 1993, Father Matthias Chuong came every other week to St. Adalbert to host mass in Vietnamese.

As St. Paul’s Vietnamese population continued to grow between 1990 and 1994, St. Adalbert was assigned a temporary associate Vietnamese pastor: Cha Le Quang Peter (Father Peter Quang Le). Father Tim and Vietnamese leaders encouraged the intermingling of the original, primarily Polish parish with the new and growing Vietnamese parish.

In 1995, the Vietnamese community at St. Adalbert held its first annual celebration of Tết (Vietnamese Lunar New Year), and by 1996, there were 200 Vietnamese families attending mass there. When Cha Peter left in 1997 due to differences with Father Tim, the Vietnamese community and Vietnamese leadership expressed concerns about who would take over Vietnamese mass. In response, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis assigned two temporary Vietnamese priests, Father Minh Vu and Father Son Nguyen, to hold Vietnamese mass at St. Adalbert.

St. Adalbert Church struggled financially in the 1990s. When Father Tim passed away in 2001, the Vietnamese community requested that the archdiocese install Father Minh Vu (Cha Minh) as the first Vietnamese pastor of St. Adalbert. His mission began with reviving the congregation’s finances, improving church facilities, and strengthening the Vietnamese community’s ties to their heritage.

To climb out of the debt, Cha Minh got creative with fundraising. He encouraged weekly donations and asked parishioners to bring in their recyclables to the church in order to meet operating expenses. He continued to grow the celebration of Tết, and the Vietnamese community came together to sell bánh chưng and bánh tét during the holiday. In the late summer and early fall he promoted Hội Chợ Hè—a summer festival where vendors sell Vietnamese food to fundraise and share Vietnamese culture.

In the fall of September 2002, with the support of the Vietnamese families of Cha Minh and Anh Tu from the neighboring Vietnamese churches of St. Columba and St. Joseph Hien, the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement (Thiếu Nhi Thánh Thể) began at St. Adalbert Church. The group provided a gathering time and space for Vietnamese American Catholic youth.

In 2003, workers renovated St. Adalbert’s basement to add bathrooms, another stairwell, and a new elevator. The church also added a PA system, a projector, and screens to better assist in delivering mass. In a newsletter, Cha Minh explained that the changes would make the basement a better and more accessible hosting venue for everyone in the community. The renovations were finished in October of 2003.