The road to ordination was a rocky one for Father Joseph Bay, taking him more than 20 years to complete and including prison and periods in refugee camps. But he never lost sight of his goal of the priesthood. Except for two years of study in Rome, he has been serving the Vietnamese Catholic community of central Ohio since 1994.
Father Bay, 62, lived in the Mekong Delta in what was then known as South Vietnam while he was growing up and said hearing the noises of battle during the Vietnam War was a regular occurrence for his family, which included his parents, now deceased, and his three brothers and four sisters, all of whom now live in Columbus
“The sounds of bombing and shooting were familiar to us,” he said. “My family was fortunate in not losing anyone, but we regularly witnessed people dying.”
After troops from the United States left Vietnam in 1975, the Communists who ruled the nation’s northern half took over the rest of the country, forcing the Catholic Church underground. Prominent Archbishop (later Cardinal) Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan was imprisoned from 1975-1988 and spent nine years in solitary confinement.
Relations between Vietnam and the Vatican later improved, and there has been a representative from the Holy See in Vietnam since 2018. The Catholic Church has remained strong in that nation despite persecution, with a seminary in northern Vietnam announcing expansion plans in 2020 because the number of vocations to the priesthood has grown too large for the institution to handle without more buildings.
The Catholic Church in Vietnam has about 7 million Catholics in 27 dioceses, with 11 major seminaries and about 2,800 seminarians, according to Catholic News Agency.
Father Bay began studying for the priesthood in high school in the 1970s. He graduated from high school in 1978 and continued to study philosophy and theology at St. Qui Seminary in Can Tho, Vietnam.
“Once the Communists closed the seminary, I had no chance to pursue the priesthood further in Vietnam and began looking for a way to escape,” he said. “While I was a seminarian, I served as a parish religious educator, and, at one point, I was put in jail for one week for the ‘crime’ of being an active Catholic.”
It took him six years and several unsuccessful attempts to get out of the country. One of those attempts resulted in eight months in jail.
Father Bay said that when he finally escaped in 1987, he was among 31 people in a small boat that crossed the Gulf of Thailand into Cambodia and later to Thailand. He was one of about 800,000 “boat people” who successfully fled Vietnam by sea between 1975 and 1995. Another 200,000 to 400,000 died in the attempt.
“I knew escaping was a life-or-death situation,” Father Bay said. “Chances were high that the Communists would kill me or arrest me, or I could die at sea. But I had felt I was being called to the priesthood since about age 11 and was determined that no setbacks would stop me.”
He said he was one of several young men interested in the priesthood who were called together by their Vietnamese pastor to serve Masses and learn more about the Catholic Church from him. Three of them, including Father Bay, entered the seminary at age 13 and became priests, with the other two staying in Vietnam.
In Thailand, Father Bay was among 5,000 people in a refugee camp and was supervisor and religious education teacher for about 170 unaccompanied children staying there. He spent about 18 months there, left the camp in spring 1989, then spent six months at a facility in the Philippines that prepared people to come to the United States.
“I wanted to live in a place with few Vietnamese so I could learn English faster, so the U.S. State Department sent me to Columbus,” he said. Bishop James Griffin invited him to attend classes at the Pontifical College Josephinum beginning in fall 1989. He received a Master of Arts degree from the college in 1993 and a Master of Divinity degree the following year and was ordained by Bishop Griffin at Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral on June 11, 1994.
He was associate pastor at the cathedral for the next two years and began serving at the same time as pastoral minister of the Vietnamese community that had found a home at Columbus Sts. Augustine and Gabriel Church, where he has remained since his arrival, except for his two years in Rome, and has been pastor since July 2008.
“I am pastor for both the English and Vietnamese communities in the parish, with the English community remaining primary because it’s the larger of the two communities,” he said. “People often think of us as ‘the Vietnamese parish’ because of the number of the Vietnamese here and because I am Vietnamese, but they are mistaken if they do so.”
He studied canon law from 1996-1998 at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome at the request of Bishop Griffin. “I always wanted to pursue canon law because I felt the more I knew about it, the better I could be as a priest,” he said. He earned a licentiate in canon law (the equivalent of a master’s degree) at the university and became part of the diocesan Tribunal upon his return.
He has served there at various times as defender of the bond, judicial vicar and judge. “I didn’t know what the Tribunal was until I was appointed to it,” he said. “I imagine I’ve helped several hundred people resolve the canonical status of their marriages. It’s provided me great satisfaction to give people a second chance and to share what they need and walk with them.”
Father Bay became a U.S. citizen in 1995. This, combined with a promise to support them financially for their first three years in this country, allowed him to serve as sponsor for six of his seven siblings, who joined him in the Columbus area. One brother had preceded him in coming to Ohio.
The brothers and sisters came to Ohio one by one and found jobs – some as seamstresses, others with Goodwill Industries and in software technology. All are among the approximately 70 people who take part in a Mass in Vietnamese every Sunday at Father Bay’s church.
“This church is not only a building but has been a spiritual home and a social and cultural center for Columbus Vietnamese Catholics for 47 years,” Father Bay said.
Besides Sunday Masses, the parish, which serves about 270 families altogether, hosts a May crowning; a Vietnamese New Year event each March; a mid-autumn celebration; a commemoration of the Feast of the Vietnamese Martyrs on the Sunday closest to Nov. 24, the actual feast day; and quarterly potlucks for everyone affiliated now or in the past with the former St. Augustine and St. Gabriel churches and schools on Columbus’ east side.
“I have been through many difficulties – religious persecution, times when I thought my goal might be beyond reach – but I never doubted God was calling me to the priesthood,” he said. “A priest is a shepherd who dedicates his life to the people of God, and, as Pope Francis has said so well, I always want to have the smell of the sheep with me. I chose the right vocation and am a very happy man.”
