WelCom August 2023
The Vietnamese government will allow the Vatican to appoint a resident representative in the communist country, following years of fraught diplomatic relationships between the two states. Relations between Hanoi and the Vatican dissolved when communist leaders took over Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. After the country’s reunification, they placed restrictions on the Catholic Church and jailed several Catholic leaders who opposed the new government. Today, about seven per cent of the country’s population of roughly 97 million people are Roman Catholic. The Vatican has proposed having a permanent representative in Vietnam for more than a decade. The two states reached an agreement in principle on the proposal in 2022.