Hanoi, Vietnam, Mar 1, 2008 / 07:30 am
A leader of the underground Buddhist Church in Vietnam has sided with Catholics in a property dispute with the Vietnamese government, in which the state-sponsored Buddhist organization claimed original ownership of a former papal nunciature now used by the government.
Hanoi Catholics had won a government promise to restore to Church control the building that once housed the papal nunciature, a building confiscated by the government in the 1950s.
However, on February 16 Venerable Thich Trung Hau, a leader of the state-recognized Vietnamese Buddhist Church (VBC), wrote to the Vietnamese prime minister asserting a claim to the property. He argued that the land had once been the site of Bao Thien pagoda,which he claimed was built in 1054. He said French colonists had seized the property and given it to the Catholic bishop in 1883.
A state-run magazine published in 2001 stated that the Bao Thien pagoda was destroyed in 1426, saying it was located on land about five kilometers north of the former nunciature.