This Catholic Activist’s Resolve Defied His Torturers — and Put Him On a Path to the Priesthood| National Catholic Register
Ever since he was a child growing up in communist Vietnam, Thong Nguyen had thought about becoming a Catholic priest.
But it wasn’t until he had fled to the United States, having been granted political asylum for challenging the regime’s persecution of the Catholic Church, that he clearly heard the call to the priesthood.
Today, Father Joseph Thong Nguyen, a former human-rights activist, is a priest in the Archdiocese of Washington, widely admired because of his joyful personality.
As those who know him well will tell you, however, his affable manner belies a steely determination, a quality tested and refined at the hands of Vietnamese authorities who jailed and beat him years ago in a failed attempt to force him to betray his Catholic faith.
Msgr. Robert Panke got an early sense of that iron resolve once Nguyen finally set his sights on entering St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C.
He was drawn to that seminary in part due to a deep devotion he’s had toward St. John Paul II since he was a teenager. It was the Polish Pontiff’s admonition, “Do not be afraid,” he says, that had encouraged him to speak out in defense of human rights and religious liberty as a younger man in Communist Vietnam.
But there was a snag: Because he was a refugee, without roots in any U.S. diocese, Msgr. Panke, then the seminary’s rector and formation direction, explained to him that he would need to wait a year before submitting his application.
“No,” was Father Thong’s categorical response. Fortunately, his “No” wasn’t seen as an act of insubordination, but rather as a “Yes” to God.
Through his determination to enter the seminary, as well as his obvious faith, Father Thong managed to persuade Msgr. Panke and the seminary’s priests to let him apply without delay.
And on June 15, 2024, this “beautiful priest,” as Msgr. Panke describes him today, was ordained by Cardinal Wilton Gregory at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Father Thong was, “a man obviously in love with Jesus, fully and completely,” Msgr. Panke said.
“I also got to experience his heart and his deep love for the Church and the heroic nature in which he defended the Church and Jesus in Communist Vietnam,” said Msgr. Panke, now pastor of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Father Thong entered the seminary in 2017 and went on to study at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He served under Msgr. Panke at St. John Neumann and is now, at age 39, parochial vicar at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church on Solomons Island in southern Maryland.
Grateful Vocation
In an interview with the Register, Father Thong said he is grateful to be in the United States, where people enjoy the freedom to practice their religious faith.
“When I came here, I saw that this is a gift, and I think we need to protect this gift that God has given us,” he said.
Raised by devout Catholic parents in the Diocese of Vinh in the north of Vietnam, Father Thong is one of seven children. Of the six boys in the family, three are priests and one is a seminarian.
Today his family is spread out across the world: His parents still live in Vietnam; the two brothers who are priests are in New Zealand and Florida; one brother is a seminarian in Rome; and his other brother and sister are living in the United Kingdom and Belgium. All share a deep pride in the course his life has taken.
“The Lord has chosen him to be a priest to save souls rather than anything else. So that is a grace and a privilege,” his brother Father Trung, who is based in New Zealand, told the Register.
While the Nguyen family went to Mass each day, some of Father Thong’s earliest memories are of clashes with the Vietnamese authorities over the right to practice their Catholic faith. He told the Register that he remembers his father, a member of the parish council, being called into the police station before each big feast day to be interrogated about what priests were expected to celebrate Mass.
Elsewhere in Vietnam — particularly in rural areas far from tourists and international travelers — the government has driven the Catholic Church underground, Father Thong said. In its 2025 annual report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called for the State Department to designate Vietnam a “Country of Particular Concern” for its ongoing violations of religious freedom. The 2018 Law on Belief and Religion, the report says, allows authorities to “strictly govern religious affairs” by mandating that religious groups report personnel and location changes to the government and demanding that religious groups turn over their financial records. Religious activities can be suspended at any time, for “unspecified, vaguely worded ‘serious violations.’”
As president of the Catholic Student Association while attending college in Hanoi, Father Thong, along with the Redemptorist priests on campus, became involved in advocating for the religious freedom and organizing prayerful demonstrations against the government’s persecution of the Church.
Outspoken and Arrested
In 2009, Father Thong fatefully visited a major hotspot of religious persecution in his home Diocese of Vinh. He had heard reports that in Tam Tòa parish, Vietnamese police had beaten hundreds of Catholics and arrested dozens of Catholics who had been trying to erect a cross and altar on the grounds of a church that had collapsed during the Vietnam War.
Going from house to house by motorcycle, Father Thong interviewed victims and reassured them that they were in his prayers. The article he published in the Catholic newspaper attracted the attention of authorities, and it wasn’t long before he himself was arrested.
“They knew [it was me] because I put my name there to testify that I’m here, and I know. And I still have that article,” he told the Register.
Father Thong remembers looking out of the second-floor window where he was staying and seeing that police had blocked all the streets around the house.
When the police showed up at the door to arrest him, they put him in handcuffs and took him to headquarters, where they tortured him for three days, beating him with a baton and kicking him repeatedly, leaving his face and body battered and bloodied, the priest told the Register.
Denied food, water and sleep, Father Thong was interrogated by police who asked him if he was an agent working for the Vatican and tried to force him to sign a document testifying that the Catholic Church is an “organization violating society.”
Father Thong refused to sign it. And he continued to refuse, even as the police beat him relentlessly.
While he was being detained, Father Thong recalled, he prayed, “Please help me to be faithful to the Lord,” and he remembers thinking of the Gospel passage Matthew 10:19, “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say.”
“I believe that is exactly what happened to me,” he told the Register. He said that after praying that he would not betray the Church, he was no longer afraid. “This is the grace of God, and I recognize that,” he said.
Life in Vietnam from that point on was very dangerous for Father Thong. In 2011, Father Peter Khai Van Nguyen, a Redemptorist priest and friend who is now based in Rome, helped him escape to Thailand via Laos.
“I felt it was my duty to protect and support this precious vocation for the Church and society,” Father Khai said.
“In my priestly life, up to now, I have not seen any young man as religious, simple, humble and open like him. I have not seen any young man who is willing to sacrifice to serve like him, regardless of danger and disadvantage,” he added.
Even in Thailand, there were indications that Father Thong was unsafe, so his friends arranged for him to go to the United States. In 2015, he was granted permanent resident status as a political refugee and lived with a sponsor family in San Jose, California, while taking classes at a local college.
“Thong coming to our home was a blessing for us because he brought a lot of good things to the family. We learned a lot from him. And he’s very religious, as a model for my children,” said his sponsor, Hieu Tran, who had fled from Vietnam in 1978.
In 2016, Father Thong traveled by bus to Washington, after feeling called to go to the U.S. capital to advocate for the victims of religious persecution. It did not take him long to connect with other Vietnamese refugees and religious-freedom advocates. He testified several times before Congress about the persecution of Christians in Vietnam, met with White House advisers, and addressed the International Religious Freedom Summit.
Extraordinary Joy
It seems everyone who meets Father Thong is struck by his faith, genuineness and sunny disposition.
Father Carter Griffin, rector of St. John Paul II Seminary, got to know Father Thong when he was director of priestly formation at the seminary.
“There’s something extraordinary about him, even before you hear all the stories about being a Catholic student leader and ending up in jail and escaping the country,” Griffin told the Register.
Father Thong, he said, is “an individual who is, I think, just almost visibly close to the Lord. He exudes a joy and a peace. And it’s a hard-won joy and peace. He has been through the ringer, and he has come out on the other side and learned how to really just completely trust the Lord.”
And that simple faith earned him the affection and admiration of his parishioners during the time Father Thong served in Msgr. Panke’s parish, he said.
Mary Beth de Ribeaux, who heads the vocations committee at St. John Neumann, told the Register that anyone who has met the priest comes away “irradiated with his joy and love.”
“He’s very accessible in the way he speaks about God … and the importance of being faithful to God and the Church in the midst of trials in life,” Msgr. Panke told the Register. “He doesn’t just talk the talk. He has actually walked it,” he said.
“He has a real priestly joy to him and a real joy of Christ, of faith. He smiles and laughs a lot, but he can get real serious about the faith, the importance of being close to Jesus,” Msgr. Panke added.
As parochial vicar at Our Lady Star of the Sea on the Chesapeake Bay, Father Thong helps teach eighth-grade religious education. The vibrant parish is home to a pre-K-to-eighth-grade school and sees as many as 1,200 people each Sunday at Mass, among them families and people who work at the Naval Amphibious Training Base on Solomons Island.
“I love the students, teaching them, and saying Mass and confession,” he said. “And I love the young people who come to the Mass here, these people working at the base.”
Reflecting on his vocation, Father Thong credited his family and parish community with helping instill his strong faith. He is certain that God had a plan for him in sending him to the United States to become a priest.
“A vocation to priesthood is a mystery and a gift. I don’t know why the Lord called me to the U.S. and to this town. It’s a mystery, “ he said.
Citing John 15:16, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you,” Father Thong said these words from the Gospel have given him strength as he serves the people of his parish.
He said with a smile, “So, I have confidence for my ministry now. ‘You told me,’ not ‘I told you.’ You put me in this parish so that I’m doing your will.”
Catalina Scheider Galiñanes contributed to this article.
