He Backs The Word With Action Priest Combines Energy And Religious Vision

Jo Hien Age: 51 Vocation: Priest

The anonymous note in the offering plate sent a razor-sharp pang right to the Rev. Jo Hien’s heart.

“Your homily was too long,” it read.

It distracted him for the better part of a day. And even though vindication came the very next night - three people, inspired by the sermon about icons throughout the church, showed up for a class in Catholicism - he couldn’t let it go.

Hien, 51, takes particular care in the quality of his preaching. He spends endless nights on his sermons, reading, praying, even making props.

In the end, if the topic is complex, his homilies run long. But he knows the alternative would shortchange his congregation.

“It is through the grace of God that I am who I am today,” he said. “I have to be true to who I am.”

In that vein, Hien is not only pastor to a flock of more than 1,000 families at St. Charles Parish in Spokane. He is a devoted son to his 80-year-old mother, a proud big brother and the uncle who has all the fun.

He is equally tenacious in all his pursuits. It took him 13 years to arrange the immigration of his family - mother, sister, brother-in-law and niece - from Vietnam.

A former boat refugee himself, Hien has a religious vision for healing the scars of the Indo-China conflict. As the recent president of two Vietnamese Catholic organizations in America, Hien produced a steady stream of letters to bishops and cardinals that respectfully prod the church in the direction he thinks it needs to go.

He would like to see the bishops of The United States and Vietnam begin a dialogue. The goal would be to acknowledge and assess the depth of psychological damage in both Asia and America as a result of the war. “A nation that cannot cry cannot laugh,” he says. “I don’t think the United States can cry.”

He blends that same vigilance with the slightest hint of playfulness in his personal life.

He took up figure skating at age 45 with his 8-year-old niece. To this day, he goes to the rink several times a week to practice spins and spread eagles. A cinematography major, he sees virtually every movie that comes out. He likes the epics like “Braveheart” and “Roots” and films like “Contact” that ask a serious question.

A student of spirituality and psychology, he plans to convert half of his apartment at St. Charles Parish into a reading room devoted to spiritual pursuits. He’ll furnished it with his own collection of books and open it to all.

A lover of children, he makes a point to hold a baby every day of his life - sometimes in the middle of Mass while he is presiding.

“I cannot preach what I am not,” he says. “I pray, ‘God, help me to know you.’ And the response I get is, ‘Know yourself.”’

Joachim Le Quang Hien was born in a high mountain village where his parents had sought refuge from the French bombing of their home, Da Nang.

On the day he was born, his 5-year-old sister died - a fairly common occurrence for Vietnam at that time. Two more of his siblings would die from illness as infants. His surviving sister is 12 years his junior.

Hien himself has come close to death on several occasions - from a polio-type virus, from a head injury after falling off a swing, a near drowning in seminary and during a car accident while searching for dead Catholics in need of proper burial.

His father, who also studied for the priesthood but was not ordained - was 46 when Hien was born.

“He was more like a grandfather,” Hien recalls. “A kind, wise figure.”

Both his mother and father grew up in Catholic villages in Vietnam, a minority in the predominantly Buddhist country.

As a small child, Hien says he always felt he would be different, do something special. His father, a prominent man in Vietnamese politics as well as the Catholic Church, entertained many important guests. Hien sat proudly at his father’s side as bishops and politicians dined and discussed important matters of the day.

While the father wore traditional Vietnamese clothing, he dressed his son French-style in ivory-colored jackets and hats.

“He was the only one at the time, of course,” his mother, Anna Nguyen says through an interpreter. “All the love we had we poured into him.”

Hien saw his father as his benefactor. But many of his classmates in the Catholic school his father ran saw the man as a strict disciplinarian.

“When they got mad at my dad, they would throw mud at my brother,” his sister, Hoa Le says.

The thought still brings tears to his mother’s eyes.

“Even now, if someone talks bad about him I feel sad,” she says. “It cuts into my heart.

At age 11, he left his parents’ home in Da Nang for the rigorous training of a seminary 200 miles away.

When he was 18, his father died unexpectedly. By the time the seminarian got home, the casket was closed and the family was ready to proceed with the funeral.

“He was of major importance to me,” Hien said. “While I always felt myself called to priesthood, some of it was wanting to carry out his call too. Because he spent more than 12 years waiting and then didn’t get ordained.”

As a seminarian, Hien says he was merely average.

“I was not the strongest, I was not the smartest, I was not the most spiritual.”

But of his original class of 30, he was the only one to be ordained. Keenly aware of his frail physical state, a result of his childhood illness, he studied and prayed harder to compensate for what he perceived as shortcomings.

He was ordained in 1974. A year later his superior ordered him to join the boat refugees and minister to the Catholics fleeing Vietnam.

“I did not choose to leave, I was instructed to do so,” he says. “I did not know where I was going.”

After a harrowing escape during which hundreds on his boat died in international waters clamoring onto an American ship, he went to Guam and Wake Island, before arriving in Seattle.

He met former Spokane Bishop Bernard Topel and, impressed, came to Spokane to work as a diocesan priest. He was Topel’s personal barber for eight years.

After spending almost two decades in Spokane, Hien urges both long-time residents and newcomers to resist acting provincially. Immigrants should embrace their culture, he says. And Spokane natives should define themselves and the characteristics that bind them together. Then both groups would better realize how they relate to the outside world.

“Except for Hillyard, there is very little sense of identity in Spokane. Shadle Park, what’s that? Logan neighborhood, what’s that?” he said. “It’s hard to understand the world if you don’t understand yourself.”

Since coming to Spokane, Hien has divided his time, ministering as a parish priest and tending to Vietnamese Catholics. He has also served as a spiritual director to local seminarians and completed a degree in applied spirituality at the University of San Francisco.

Bishop William Skylstad named Hien pastor at St. Charles, 4515 N. Alberta, last August. He immediately established himself as an unorthodox administrator.

“He has delegated a lot of the functions of the parish,” said Deacon John Sicilia. “That frees him up to be very pastoral, to be a priest.”

Hien makes a point to be accessible to all his parishioners - from the children at the parish school to a reclusive Vietnam vet who lives with his ailing parents.

“When he’s with someone, they have his undivided attention,” Sicilia says. “He does not like to be late, but if he is, his response is ‘I was where I had to be.”’ During his daily visits to the parish school, Sicilia describes Hien as the Pied Piper. Children clamor after him, tugging at the pockets of his sport coat and telling him jokes, which he sometimes weaves into his sermons.

He spends the rest of his days with people - his parishioners, Vietnamese immigrants or those who cross his path. If they don’t call him, he calls them. In the evenings he attends church functions or visits his family.

That leaves him working past midnight on his sermons.

When Catherine and Jerry Noble, who knew Hien from a stint as assistant pastor at St. Thomas More Parish, heard he was assigned to St. Charles, they switched parishes.

“We’ve had pastors in the past, they get up and give the sermon and that was the end of it for the whole week,” Jerry Noble says. “Father Jo’s commitment is from morning to night.”

Those who know him best - his sister and his mother - attribute his success as both a priest and a pastor to the unique set of experiences that have led them all to Spokane.

“There is a saying in Vietnam, ‘If you know the other person you know yourself,” Le says. “In America, you say ‘Heal yourself.’ or “Pick your battles.’ That is my brother.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo