His Holiness received Thanh Man at the Vatican City on Saturday. The Vietnamese parliamentarian arrived in Rome that same day for a five-day official visit to Italy.
During the meeting, the visitor expressed his gratitude for the kind sentiments that the Pope and the Holy See have shown toward the Vietnamese people and greatly valued the Pope’s messages of peace and his valuable contributions to boosting peace, social justice, environmental protection, and care for the poor.
These values, the parliamentary leader stated, quoted here by the government’s online newspaper, “are entirely consistent with the aspirations of the Vietnamese people in the cause of building and defending the Fatherland.”
Thanh Man shared with His Holiness the results of his visit to the Archdiocese of Hanoi on April 5, during which they observed that relations between Vietnam and the Holy See have made significant and substantial progress in the last few years.
Such progress includes high-level meetings, the opening of the Office of the Permanent Representative of the Holy See in Vietnam, the development of religious life within the Vietnamese Catholic community, and the maintenance of effective operational and exchange mechanisms within the Joint Working Group.
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