Our second Mission in the diocese of Hung Hoa centered primarily on the needs of disabled people. Catechetical formation endeavor was removed from the top priority, and yet, not neglected or abandoned.

I. Catechetical Formation Program and Convention:

• A 7-day formation seminar was held for Master Catechists to help them focus on the First Penance and First Holy Communion programs.
• The Master Catechist Formation program was followed by a 4-day Convention on Religious Education that gathered 500 catechists selected from a workforce of about 2,000 catechists to celebrate the Feast of St. Trần Văn Truật, the Catechist's patron saint and a native of the diocese, on December 18, 2000. Catechists were offered opportunities to review their ministry and update their knowledge base in the field of Religious Education.

II. Assistance to the Disabled Program

A team of 12 "case managers" including 7 women religious, 2 seminarians and 3 lay catechists was recruited for the task of implementing the initial phase of the program. All participants attended an Orientation Session with the purpose of familiarizing themselves with the Church's Social Teachings and her concerns and work for the poor, the underprivileged and handicapped throughout the centuries.

Criteria of eligibility for VCA Financial Assistance were clearly established; these served as guidelines to assist case managers in identifying and assessing eligibility of prospective recipients, and recommending people for assistance. They include the following elements:

• Physical and mental disabilities: Physical impairment, mental retardation and dementia. Severity or degree of impairments: The individual must be impaired to the point of being unable to work for his/her own food. Children and adults alike must be impaired to the degree that they require assistance with their activities of daily living such as eating, sitting, standing, walking, and other personsonal needs.
• Assessment of family's financial resources: Sole income from the crops of the family's allotted parcel of land, with no other regular income included.
• Family's ability to care for the disabled: Number of school age and young children in the family; the number of able-bodied adults in the household; and isolation of the disabled personson.
• No allocation of governmental subsidies to the disabled: Pastors and members of the parish councils efficiently helped to ascertain that families of the prospective eligible disabled receive no government subsidies.

It was found that the majority of government subsidy recipients are family members of government officials or veterans. Very few among them are Catholics. Catholic veterans who are aggressive enough may get access to the program, but disabled family members of deceased veterans, especially Catholics, have the hardest time establishing eligibility.

The disable children of the Do family will now received monthly support of 3 USD per child.

Vi Duc Tuan who was abandoned but now will be cared for in the Dispensary.

Nguyen Anh Tuan is a father of four children who received financial assistant for their education.

The Kim and Linh brother and sister are growing weaker as their diseases are progressing.

Our VCA Assistance Program includes those meeting our eligibility criteria, regardless of religious affiliation. This inclusion was an eye-opening experience to many case managers, especially religious women and seminarians, but interestingly not the lay catechists and parish council members.

The case managers including myself went out to parishes seen as the poorest areas in the diocese to visit needy families identified by parish council members as having one or more disabled personsons. The territories we visited include parishes in the provinces of Tuyen Quang, Yen Bai, Phu Tho, and Ha Tay. Two hundred and eighty four (284) eligible disabled individuals were identified and documented. Each began receiving a monthly grant of 50,000 dong (Vietnamese dollars) beginning with the month of December 2000. Funds were allocated for monthly disbursements until April, 2001 as I expected to return with continuing assistance in May 2001.

The task proved to be emotionally charged as it brought us to witness the most unthinkable and heart rending of human sufferings endured by these disabled and their families. The five following cases are representative of the Program participants (photos are attached):

• The Do family in the parish of Chieu Ung. All three children, Do Van Tuyen, 27; Do Van Truyen, 21 and Do Thi Huyen, 15, are helplessly deformed and incapacitated by polio. While their parents work all day in the rice field barely earning a meager living, the three brothers are cared for by their frail 83-year-old grandfather. We gave them two wheelchairs; a third will be given to them next year. In addition, each of the children now receives 3 US dollars every month to pay for food, medicine and other needs.
• Vi Duc Duan, 14, paraplegic, deaf and mute, born to a non-Catholic household who believes he brings shame and heaven's curse to the family. Many a time his father has wished him dead to eliminate the family's sense of shame and disgrace. Last summer, the father brought his son to the railroad tracks and left him there, thinking that the frequent oncoming trains would finish his son off. Duan, who ordinarily cannot move himself from any spot where he is placed, somehow miraculously managed to roll himself away to safety; passers-by found him alive. I personsonally negotiated with the father for the child to be cared for in our Dispensary on a permanent basis.
• Nguyen Anh Tuan, 35, father of 4 children aged 14, 12, 10 and 7, lost his left lower limb to bone cancer. The family lives in a 10ft x 20ft hut made of rotting palm leaves. In the company of his wife, supporting himself on his one good leg, Tuan tends and manually irrigates the rice field to provide for his family. The children go to school intermittently, depending on whether their parents can come up with money to pay for tuition. We helped this family with supplies and school fees. In the future, we hope to receive enough funds to repair and extend the family's living quarters.

• Tran Van Kim, 17, and his sister Tran Thi Linh, 3. Both children are 90% blind, paralyzed in both legs and can barely speak. Kim needs to be dragged on the floor whenever his mother wants to move him from one spot to another in the house. Linh's condition has not yet deteriorated to the same degree as that of her older brother; she is able to hop around like a frog using her hands and knees. Both children grow weaker every day as their disease progresses.

  What touched me the most was what the parents said: "We are blessed in that both of us are able to work to provide for our disabled children. If you have to conserve your resources for the most unfortunate, please consider our next door neighbors who are very poor, and yet they have to support an elderly mother and a sister who are both severely emotionally impaired." Actually the Tran family is financially just a tiny bit better off as compared to their neighbors. Most blessed are the poor both materially and in spirit!

• Mrs. Tran Thi Van, 76, is paralyzed from the waist down. Having no family, she was living alone in a 8ft x 12 ft hut on a street corner in the city of Phu Tho. The hut was her former "shop" where she used to make a living by peddling snacks. Several years ago she fell and lost her ambulatory mobility. The hut became her living space and toilet, as she is unable to move about. Peddlers doing business around her hut would sometimes throw her a bite of their leftovers, if they had any.

  Last summer, Sister Thuong discovered her in pitiful condition. Three sisters subsequently spent 6 hours scraping away a 10-inch layer of her dried waste from all over the floor of the hut. Sr. Thuong made daily rounds of 19 km by bicycle from the village of Chieu Ung to feed and clean her. I myself witnessed the appalling conditions of her living quarters a few times and found them inhuman.

  Even though Sr. Thuong was bathing her and assisting her with personsonal needs on a daily basis, Mrs. Vận needed more care. I inquired among the people on that street to see if there was someone willing to help her a bit during the day (I would pay for their time). Sadly, I was told that even if I paid 1,000,000 dong per day, nobody would go near her.

  Mrs. Van is now living at the Dispensary and is well cared for.

The most strongly emphasized responsibility of the case managers is not the disbursal subsidies, but the monthly personsonal contacts they make with the disabled and their families. Their genuine caring concern shows God's love more eloquently than the small grant does. Case managers also serve as channels to alert the Dispensary's staff to people who might require some medical assistance, although the Dispensary can only reach out to people in the province of Phu Tho, which is seen as the most impoverished in the diocese.