[LINK] "He fled Vietnam in a boat, now he's breaking new ground as a bishop "

[rfmcdonald]

This Joe Friesen article at the Globe and Mail points to the interesting phenomenon of how even the established religious denominations are changing, as native-born populations stop being active and immigrant populations appear.

Twenty-six years ago, Vincent Nguyen was a boy dreaming of freedom and a chance to become a priest when he and 19 relatives piled into a wooden fishing boat and prayed they would evade Vietnam's coastal patrol and slip out to sea.

Tomorrow, Father Nguyen will become Canada's first Catholic bishop of Asian descent, as well as its youngest bishop, at a ceremony in Toronto that's being hailed as a landmark moment.

Father Nguyen will be named an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Toronto with responsibility for the areas of Scarborough and Durham. As the only non-white Catholic bishop in Canada, he will also be counted on to represent the hundreds of thousands of Canadian Roman Catholics who have immigrated from Asia, Africa and Latin America and feel as though their voices are unheeded in the church's upper echelons.

"The Catholic Church in Canada is growing through Asian people," Father Nguyen said.

"The fact that I'm an Asia-born bishop will bring my experience into the conference of bishops and maybe I can contribute to the issues the church is discussing. The church is very mindful of issues of immigration."