A migrant journey from Vietnam to Columban priesthood.

Columban Fr Nguyen Xuan Tien [fourth from left] and his brother, Most Rev Thinh Nguyen [fourth from right] and his brother, with fellow Columbans at Essendon house. 

On 30th April 1975, the army of North Vietnam captured Saigon and brought the Vietnam War to an end. Nguyen Xuan Tien was just 11 years old. His father’s shop, where all kinds of musical instruments were repaired, went into decline. The future was not bright under the new Communist regime for a staunchly Catholic family like his.

Young Tien suffered from asthma, which needed treatment. When he was 15, his father suggested that he join some of the ‘boat people’ who were trying to make the journey from Vietnam to another country. The family managed to get the necessary amount of gold together; the smugglers would take nothing else.

Ready to embark on the journey, he waited near a beach for some days before he was caught by the police and imprisoned for 14 weeks. On release, he was not allowed to return to school, so he worked with his father for the next three years.

At the age of 18, he received an order from the military to present himself for service. This would mean going to war in Cambodia and the strong possibility of death. He decided to make another attempt at escape. Because of the family’s situation, his father asked him to try and take his three younger brothers with him, 15-year-old Duc and eleven-year-old twins Thinh and Phat.

Once again, gold had to be found. “With 45 other people, we hid in a house not far from the river. At a given sign, at about 2 am in the morning, we had to start running across the fields to a boat.” Tien carried one of the frightened twins on his back, and another escapee carried the second twin.

At the river, there was chaos as people who had not paid tried to climb aboard. They were not allowed to bring anything with them because, if the boat was searched by police, they had to appear to be locals just crossing the river. The transfer eventually took place to a bigger boat, about twelve metres long by two and a half metres wide, and the journey began for the 49 hopefuls. It lasted two weeks, during which time they endured four or five typhoons.

Food rations comprised one small fistful of uncooked rice in the morning and evening and half a cup of water from a rusty tank. That, along with a frequently stormy sea, made for plenty of sea sickness. On the twelfth day, a large trawler from Thailand gave them cooked fish, rice and water and, more importantly, corrected their course, making it possible for them to reach Malaysia in a day.

Fr Nguyen Xuan Tien with parents

Once there, they were surrounded by soldiers and later handed over to the Red Cross. They were all then transferred to a holding camp for refugees on the Island of Bidong. This was to be ‘home’ for the next year. Life was fairly tough, Tien says, and food and water were not plentiful. It was a deserted place. Some young people tried to supplement their diet by fishing in the sea. The group supported each other to keep their spirits up. They did their best to improve their English and the Christians prayed together every day.

Eventually, a sister of Tien, who had managed to get to Australia in 1981, was in a position to sponsor her four brothers and they were accepted as immigrants in Australia in 1983. In spite of having little money Tien was able to do three more years of secondary school. Then he found his way to the Columban seminary in Australia.

He was ordained a Columban priest on 24 June 1995, the anniversary of his escape from Vietnam. Today he is parish priest of three parishes in the Archdiocese of Tokyo in Japan. Tien has four sisters and eight brothers. One of his younger brothers, who arrived in Australia after Tien, is now Bishop Thinh Xuan Nguyen of the Archdiocese of Melbourne.

Excerpt from the article Migrant Journeys by Fr Alo Connaughton in the January/February 2025 issue of the Irish Far East magazine

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