A new family life, and a new religion

Stanley Nguyen began attending church as a kind of thank-you to people who helped him after he came to the United States as one of the Boat People in the late 1970s.

When the family that offered him a place to live and work went to a Catholic church, Nguyen went, too. He was getting along in a place where he - with limited English skills and no nearby family - relied on the goodwill of others.

It wasn't until Nguyen settled in Philadelphia, nearly 25 years after fleeing war-ravaged South Vietnam, that religion became personal.

In April, Nguyen stood at the altar of St. Helena Roman Catholic Church in Olney and was baptized, along with his wife, Thuong Dinh, and two daughters. Two weeks later, the family gathered again at the altar as Nguyen and his wife were married in a religious ceremony, 13 years after the couple first said "I do."

"I'm proud that all my family and friends came to share with me," Nguyen, 56, said moments after the wedding. "It means a lot."

At St. Helena's, Nguyen, an office worker for a cleaning company, found a church with a thriving Vietnamese community, along with a multicultural mix that mirrors its Olney neighborhood.

Parishioners at the 1,200-family congregation are Vietnamese, Latino, African American, African, and white; many of the whites began attending the church when it was a mostly Irish and German congregation. A diverse staff of clergy is led by Msgr. Joseph T. Trinh, who emigrated from Vietnam and leads the Philadelphia-based, 1.5-million-member Federation of Vietnamese Catholics, a national group.

In September, an estimated 1,200 Vietnamese Catholics from around the world are expected to attend the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia and remain for the visit of Pope Francis.

"For Vietnamese Catholics, the church is the center of everything, the spiritual and social," Trinh said. He and a large committee are coordinating local efforts to welcome the delegates.

In South Vietnam, Nguyen's connection to the Catholic Church was only through school.

One of seven children, Nguyen attended a Catholic school in Bac Lieu province, where his family owned a small variety store. The family religion was "ancestor worship," Nguyen said, a tradition that involves veneration of dead family members who followers believe have influence on the lives of the living.

Nguyen, whose birth name is Thien, worked at the family store seven days a week. In 1970, the family moved to Saigon to open a new store, but when North Vietnamese troops took the city, Nguyen and his family fled back to Bac Lieu and became farmworkers.

With the economy crushed by the war and the communists in power, Nguyen said, he decided to leave.

"I felt like I had no future," he said.

So in 1979, he boarded a small fishing boat crowded with 100 people and left home. He sailed for three days. Malaysian officials turned the boat back out to sea, but Indonesia accepted the refugees.

"It was very scary. It was so many people, you couldn't move," Nguyen said.

Nguyen talked about his experience in the living room of his family's modest Olney home, decorated with Catholic art and religious figurines. His 3-year-old daughter, Jillian, played with a tablet on the floor, while sister Lillian, 10, sat next to Nguyen on the sofa.

"I thought you came like we did, on a plane," Lillian said to her father.

"I did it the hard way," Nguyen said.

Nguyen spent months in refugee camps and eventually was sponsored by a group of Jaycees from Indiana to travel to the United States. He landed in Evansville, Ind., and stayed with a family that worked in construction and went to a Catholic church on Sundays. Nguyen worked with them and joined them for services.

"It brought back memories of school," Nguyen said.

He learned English, earned his GED, and attended college. He moved to Boston, then Las Vegas. He worked as a road surveyor and even tried playing professional poker.

He chose the name Stanley after seeing the movie The Year of the Dragon. In it, Mickey Rourke plays a police detective and decorated Vietnam veteran named Stanley White.

Over the years, some of Nguyen's siblings joined him in this country. In 1999, he visited a brother who had settled in South Philadelphia. Nguyen decided to stay.

Nguyen dabbled in business, starting a short-lived Vietnamese TV station, for which he covered an event at which he met Trinh. In the priest - called "Holy Trinh-ity" on the church website - Nguyen found someone with a similar background and experiences.

"I wasn't Catholic, but he treated me equally with other people," said Nguyen, who started going to church, but mostly "just on the big days."

When Nguyen decided to buy a house, he looked in Olney, where there was not only a large Vietnamese community, but "less traffic and you could park your car," Nguyen said.

He began going to Trinh's church regularly. He joined church ministries, including the St. Joseph the Worker volunteer group that helps maintain the church.

"I feel like it made me happy and calm and peaceful," Nguyen said, a feeling he welcomed.

By then, Nguyen had traveled back to Vietnam and met Dinh in a restaurant. The couple eventually married in a civil ceremony, but Dinh, 38, who worked in real estate, remained in Vietnam, stuck behind a wall of immigration paperwork. Lillian was born while Nguyen was in the United States.

St. Helena's brought him solace and family.

"I was alone and I would come here to talk about it," Nguyen said. "I felt like I had a big family even though my wife wasn't here."

In 2007, Nguyen's wife and daughter finally joined him. Five years later, Jillian was born.

Nguyen began taking his daughters to church with him, but his wife, raised a Buddhist, was reluctant to go.

"I talked her into it," Nguyen said.

"Lillian was going to [St. Helena's-Incarnation] school, and they were going to church. I just wanted the family to be together," Dinh said in Vietnamese, translated by her husband.

So in April, the family took Catholic education classes and were baptized together. Nguyen and Dinh were then married in the church, with Lillian and Jillian.

Family. That's the focus of the World Meeting of Families Sept. 22 to 25, which is bringing Pope Francis to the city the next two days.

Trinh said the pope has been invited to a Vietnamese community Mass at St. Helena's on Sept. 26.

"The pope is coming, so I guess I got baptized at the right time and place," Nguyen said. "I hope to have a chance to meet him. That's my wish."

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