On August 15, 1975, Vietnam’s communist regime arrested Bishop Francis Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận. They did not let him take anything with him. He would spend thirteen years in prison, nine of them in complete isolation.
The day after his arrest, they allowed him to write to his family. He asked for clothes, toothpaste, and something else, “a little wine”, he explained, “as medicine for his stomach”. His family understood the hidden message and managed to get him a bottle labeled as medicine, along with hosts hidden inside.
That was enough. Three drops of wine and one of water in the palm of his hand. That was his chalice for thirteen years. His cell, without windows or witnesses, became the smallest cathedral in the world.
When they transferred him to a re-education camp, he continued celebrating Mass at night, silently sharing Communion with other Catholic prisoners. Years later, by then a cardinal, he would remember it this way: they were the most beautiful Masses of his life.
He was released on November 21, 1988. In 2000, Pope John Paul II invited him to preach at the Vatican. He died in Rome in 2002. Today, the Church is studying whether to canonize him.
They imprisoned him to extinguish his faith. He ended up illuminating an entire cell with three drops of wine.
