Church: Vietnam Revokes Visas Of 3 From Vatican

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam has revoked the visas of three Vatican representatives who had been expected to hold talks her about a late cardinal forced into exile, a church official said Tuesday.

The delegation was set to arrive Friday and planned to discuss late Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who was appointed deputy archbishop of Saigon days before the South Vietnamese capital fell to the communist North in 1975.

The revocations were disclosed by an official from the Ho Chi Minh City archbishop’s office who provided no other details and spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the press.

Thuan was a nephew of Ngo Dinh Diem, president of U.S.-backed South Vietnam who was assassinated in 1963 during the Vietnam War.

In 1991, Thuan was forced into exile in Rome after spending 13 years in a communist re-education camp. He died in 2002, one year after being appointed cardinal.

Vietnam and the Vatican held talks last month in Hanoi, but the two sides did not reach a breakthrough in establishing formal ties.

There are 6 million Roman Catholics in Vietnam, the second largest Catholic community in Southeast Asia after the Philippines. However, tensions have existed for decades between Catholics and the Hanoi government over church property seized by the Communists and other issues.

Pope Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli in January 2011 as his special, nonresident envoy.