Mang Lang Church

Two bell towers stand on either side of the facade, with a cross between them and tall arched doorways below. The Mằng Lăng Church, in the Tuy An area of the old Phú Yên province, now part of Đắk Lắk, has the look of a building that has gathered a great deal of time.

The church lies about 35 kilometers north of the center of Tuy Hòa. It belongs to the Mằng Lăng parish of the Qui Nhơn diocese. Its story starts in September 1888, when Father Joseph Lacassagne came to take charge of the northern part of Phú Yên and made his home at Mằng Lăng. People there fondly called him Cố Xuân. In 1892 he began to build the church. After his death, Father Antoine Edmond Wendling carried the work through to the end, and the church was formally opened on April 14, 1907.

The facade is built in the classical Gothic style. The grounds cover more than 5,000 square meters. Descriptions of the interior speak of a wooden ceiling and wooden patterns, with details that feel both European and Vietnamese. The great bell was brought from the French city of Marseille to Mằng Lăng in 1905. The parish history adds that the church has three bells, large and small, and that they still ring on a regular schedule, following the church calendar.

What sets this church apart from other old churches is its tie to two large stories in the history of Vietnamese Catholicism. One is the story of Quốc ngữ. The other is the story of Anrê Phú Yên.

First, Quốc ngữ. Quốc ngữ is the Vietnamese script written in Latin letters. The church is presented as the keeper of a book by Father Alexandre de Rhodes, printed in Rome in 1651. The book is called Phép giảng tám ngày, and it is an important document in the making of Quốc ngữ. That script grew out of the work of missionaries in the 17th century, Alexandre de Rhodes among them. Vietnamese people use it every day now.

Then, Anrê Phú Yên. He was a young man from Phú Yên and the first disciple of Alexandre de Rhodes. The diocese records that he died a martyr on July 26, 1644, in Quảng Nam. When he was arrested, he refused to give up his faith, and he was put to death. On March 5, 2000, Pope John Paul II declared him Blessed. For this reason the church grounds hold a crypt and a memorial shrine to Blessed Anrê Phú Yên. It is a place of pilgrimage that matters especially to Vietnamese Catholics.

The name Mằng Lăng is said to come from the mằng lăng tree, also called bằng lăng, which once grew thickly in the area. That is a popular explanation, passed down by word of mouth through many generations.

The story here touches the history of a language, the history of a faith and the history of the people of one region. Standing before the facade, with its two bell towers and the quiet moss of more than 120 years, a visitor may carry away something else. It is neither a story of religion nor of ordinary life, but a sense of the length and depth of a region that has lived through so much.