OBITUARIES - June 18, 1988

Philippe Nguyen Kim Dien; Archbishop

Philippe Nguyen Kim Dien, 67, the Vietnamese archbishop who defied communist attempts to control his country’s Roman Catholic Church. Dien was barred as a priest and put under house arrest in 1984 for urging priests not to join the Committee for Solidarity of Patriotic Vietnamese Catholics. The state had formed the group the previous year, and critics said it was designed to control the church. He spent his last years under house arrest but continued to circulate letters among his parishioners. In 1986, cardinals and bishops from 40 countries issued a protest letter when Vietnam barred Dien from traveling to Rome to attend the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. There are 4 million to 5 million Catholics among Vietnam’s largely Buddhist population of about 63 million. In Ho Chi Minh City on June 8.