Subject: austraLasia #1307

From: Julian Fox

Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:32:07 +0200

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

austraLasia 1307

Salesians from Vietnam visit Slovenia to honour memory of Province 'Patriarch' Fr Andrej Majcen

LJUBLJANA: 26th October 2005 -- Fr Andrej Majcen died in 1999, but for Vietnam's Salesians, the memory of this great pioneer and acknowledged patriarch of the Province is vividly alive, so much so in fact that six Vietnamese confreres, including Brothers who had lived much of their Salesian lives with Fr Majcen, went to Slovenia to celebrate the centenary of his birth there.  To be precise, Fr Majcen was born in 1904, but the centenary celebrations were held this year partly to enable this very special group of the people he so loved and lived for to be present.  The Vietnamese group of confreres arrived in Trieste, north-eastern Italy on 20th October, where they visited a missionary exhibition including an exhibit dedicated to Fr Majcen.  From there they entered Slovenia and on 21st visited a high school in Zelinje where Fr Majcen returned to work after his expulsion from Vietnam in 1976.  They visited his tomb, and attended a full day of lectures dedicated to Fr Majcen.  The lectures by various local and Salesian scholars, pointed to the heroic qualities of this great Slovenian missionary.
    Though not the very first Salesian to have worked in Vietnam - that honour goes to another great missionary, the Frenchman Fr Dupont - Fr Majcen is acknowledged as the founder, along with his companion Fr Giacomino, of the ongoing Salesian presence in Vietnam beginning with their arrival in Hanoi on 3rd October 1952.  The Salesians had been entrusted with 450 orphans at a work (The Family of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus) that was personally handed over to them by the newly appointed Bishop and ex-director of the same work.
    From that time on, through time of intense joy and deep sorrow, the name of Fr Andrej Majcen is written indelibly into the history and lives of the Salesian presence in Vietnam.  After Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and the division of the country, he transferred, with his orphans, to the South, first to Buon ma Thuot and then to Thu Duc in Saigon.  In 1957 he opened the Thu Duc Aspirantate, with 50 aspirants, as its Rector.  A year later he became the first Provincial Delegate (under China) and in 1960 became Director of novices for the first group of 14 Vietnamese novices on home soil (still at Thu Duc).  The novitiate then transferred to Tram Hanh, still with Fr Majcen as Rector and Director of novices.  He returned to Thu Duc aspirantate in 1972 as Rector, but in the difficult years leading up to the year 1975 when the nation was unified and the Americans left the country.  He briefly became Director of novices again in 1975 but was expelled as the last foreign missionary to leave Vietnamese soil in 1976.  From then until his death he continued to support the mission he loved so much.
    No wonder, then, that his memory is so revered.  He leaves a legacy of a vital province with 258 confreres and a province which now records 19 missionaries currently serving the Church throughout the world, including in Vietnam's 'own' Salesian mission in Mongolia.
NOTE:  Though in Slovenian, the www.donbosko.si website contains excellent photos of the event.  Enough to look for the word 'Majcen' to see them.
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