Thaddée Anselme Lê Hữu Từ

Thaddée Anselme Lê Hữu Từ , also Tađêô Anselme Lê Hữu Từ OCist (born October 29, 1897 in Di Loan , Quảng Trị Province , Annam ; † April 24, 1967 in Gò Vấp , Gia Định Province , South Vietnam ) was a Vietnamese Roman Catholic Bishop .

Life

Lê Hữu Từ entered the Cistercian order in the 1920s . On December 22, 1928, he was ordained a priest . On June 14, 1945 he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of the later diocese Phát Diệm about 100 kilometers south of Hanoi and titular bishop of Daphnusia . He was ordained bishop on October 29, 1945 by Bishop Jean-Baptiste Tong Nguyên Ba , co-consecrator was Bishop Dominique Maria Ho Ngoc Cân .

During the unstable political situation in French Indochina , Lê Hữu Từ expanded the power base of the Vietnamese clergy in his Catholic settlement area of ​​around 500 parishes. As head of the community, Lê Hữu Từ controlled a militia, the local administration and the judiciary among his fellow believers. Contemporaries like Graham Greene described his role as that of the head of a feudal religious small state. During the August Revolution he turned to the Viet Minh . When the French occupied Phat Diem with troops in 1949, he pursued a rather neutral policy and was very skeptical of the Vatican's interference in the affairs of his organization. After France's defeat in the Indochina War , he emigrated to South Vietnam with many of his fellow believers .

Lê Hữu Từ was a prominent political figure during the Indochina War. French authorities saw disloyalty in his maneuvering policy, which was based on the independence of his community under his leadership, but could not prosecute him and tried to get him to their side by making concessions. The French general Jean de Lattre de Tassigny suspected a cooperation between Lê Hữu Từ and the Viet Minh.

In 1959, he resigned as Vicar Apostolic. He was succeeded by Paul Bùi Chu Tạo .

Lê Hữu Từ attended all sessions of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). He died on April 24, 1967.

Web links

• Entry on Thaddée Anselme Le Huu Tu on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on August 18, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ðức Cha Tađêô Lê Hữu Từ Nguyên Giám Mục Giáo Phận Phát Diệm ( Memento from March 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Jacques Dalloz: Dictionnaire de la Guerre d'Indochine 1945-1954. Paris 2006, p. 139
3. ^ Jacques Dalloz: La guerre d'Indochine 1945-1954. Paris 1987, pp. 151-153
4. ↑ ^{a b} Frederick Logevall: Embers of War - The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. New York 2013, p. 298

predecessor	Office	successor
Jean-Baptiste Tong Nguyên Ba	Apostolic Vicar of Phát Diệm 1945–1959	Paul Bùi Chu Tạo