{"id":2750,"date":"2007-03-03T13:52:11","date_gmt":"2007-03-03T13:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/at-last.html"},"modified":"2007-03-03T13:52:11","modified_gmt":"2007-03-03T13:52:11","slug":"at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/at-last.html","title":{"rendered":"At last"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very nice story from the Kalamazoo diocese about a priest who has overcome much:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Being a parish priest in America is a dream come true for Tran. <\/p>\n

The second of six children, Tran was baptized Gioan Baotixita Tran-Kim-Tuyen at Duc Huy Catholic Church in Dong Nai, South Vietnam. <\/p>\n

Life was hard for Tran, who grew up on a family farm while civil war raged in his country. His father served as a South Vietnamese Army captain. <\/p>\n

"It was so bad, how can I describe?" he said. "There was fear. Always the fear." <\/p>\n

From childhood, he dreamed of living in the United States, "because here there is a lot of freedom \u2014 freedom of religion and a good economy." <\/p>\n

After serving as an altar boy, Tran knew God was calling him to be a parish priest. <\/p>\n

But things grew worse in Dong Nai when the communists took over in 1975, Tran said. The economy went down; people lived in poverty. His father was captured and sent to an "education camp," or prison, for five years. <\/p>\n

The church was forced to close, and all priests and nuns were sent to jail, Tran said. <\/p>\n

"And not just Catholics, not just Christians," he said, "but they persecuted every kind of religion." <\/p>\n

But Tran’s passion to become a priest grew. His journey took 19 years<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very nice story from the Kalamazoo diocese about a priest who has overcome much: Being a parish priest in America is a dream come true for Tran. The second of six children, Tran was baptized Gioan Baotixita Tran-Kim-Tuyen at Duc Huy Catholic Church in Dong Nai, South Vietnam. Life was hard for Tran, who grew…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAt last - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/at-last.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At last - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Very nice story from the Kalamazoo diocese about a priest who has overcome much: Being a parish priest in America is a dream come true for Tran. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}