Originally published at National Catholic Register
HANOI, Vietnam — So many young children, hanging off locally made scooters, are flying past the monumental gray façade of St Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi that I can hardly cross the street to get to church.
It’s 4:50 p.m. on my first day in Vietnam and I’m easily distracted. So I head to the nearby school that’s disgorging buoyant scooter traffic.
Parents and grandparents are scooping up youngsters from a driveway bordering a big, cheerful kindergarten. There’s also a statute of Mary in the yard.
Not wanting to be stampeded, I take cover near Mary. A religious sister in a simple gray habit soon approaches me with a smile. Sister Tra belongs to Lovers of the Holy Cross, a religious order flourishing in Vietnam, founded in 1670 by a French priest. Across the country, there are some 4,500 members; 160 women religious live in a convent by the kindergarten.
Sister Tra offers to show me the convent’s church using an interior entrance. As we entered a fan-cooled nave and my eyes adjusted to the dark, I see eight very old women scattered in pews, praying.
Leaving the convent complex, I cross the street to the sprawling
