CONSTRUCTION on Our Lady of Vietnamese Martyrs church and the Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre is set to start on Flint Street, Inala, in June.
Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge blessed the plot in August, 2018, but construction was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vietnamese Catholic Community chaplain and Divine Word Missionary Father Joseph Vu said the community needed a larger space where they could catechize and form more than 450 young people who attended their Sunday School each week.
“We really invest our energy, our activity and personnel and even financially into the youth because we believe they are the core of the future for our community,” he said.
With so many children in their youth program, bigger than some regional schools in comparison, the current demountable set-up and youth areas were unfit for the growth they were seeing.
Part of the new building works would include spacious classrooms for the Sunday School, where they could teach about the faith and their culture.
“Specifically, we want to maintain the language,” Fr Vu said.
He said most of the children in the community are born in Australia and many do not have a chance to live in Vietnam and experience the culture.
He said the children learned excellent English in their Australian schooling from kindergarten through to university, but the Vietnamese language was at risk of being forgotten unless it was intentionally preserved.
The language was a gateway to certain cultural elements of their ritual and their way of life, but most importantly the community wanted to worship and pray to God in their mother tongue as one community.
“It has been handed down to us from our parents and grandparents and we want to continue to hand it on to the next generation,” he said.
Our Lady of Vietnamese Martyrs church and community centre concept art had been posted outside the community hall for community members to see.
The architecture of the new church was in a modern style and was conscious of maximizing the view of the altar from all angles, even outside the church where glass panels could be removed for larger gatherings like at Christmas and Easter.
The Vietnamese Catholic Community had more than 3000 members and more space was always welcome.
Fr Vu said building a church of their own had been a community goal for a long time.
He said Archbishop Coleridge and Brisbane archdiocese had provided great support during the application and construction process.
He said the community wanted to “flourish and continue to contribute to the main activity of the archdiocese”.
The first group of 20 Vietnamese Catholic immigrants, who escaped the Vietnam War, had laid the foundations of the community 40 years ago and Fr Vu hoped this next step would ensure the future of the community.
The community will relocate from its current site on Lilac Street opposite St Mark’s church to its new site in the next two years.
