Tan Dinh Church

There is a building in Ho Chi Minh City that young people know without any explanation. It stands on Hai Bà Trưng Street.

This is Tân Định Church, officially the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Young people in Saigon call it Nhà thờ Hồng, the Pink Church. Its image has been shared millions of times on social media.

Work on the church began in 1870, and it opened on December 16, 1876. That was more than 150 years ago. Its founder was Father Donatien Éveillard, a French priest. He supervised the whole construction through two hard years, raising money from parishioners and from the French government while directing the building site himself. The total cost was about 15,000 Indochinese piastres, in the money of that time.

Father Éveillard also invited the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres to Tân Định. They opened an orphanage and a boarding school beside the church. This was the first step of Catholic education in the area.

The church is built mainly in the Gothic style, with Romanesque and Baroque details. The Gothic features are the pointed arched doors, the stained-glass windows and the pointed bell tower. The front has one main tower and two smaller towers set symmetrically on either side. The whole building reaches upward.

In 1929, the church was enlarged under Father John Baptist Nguyễn Bá Tòng. He had the main bell tower built, 52 meters and 62 centimeters high, about the height of a 17-story building. On top stands a bronze cross three meters tall. Inside the tower hang five bells imported from France, weighing 5.5 tons in all. Their sound carries across the whole Tân Định neighborhood at the hours of worship.

Father Tòng came from the very village of Tân Định. He became a priest in 1896. In 1933, he was summoned to the Vatican and ordained a bishop in Saint Peter's Basilica, under Pope Pius the Eleventh. He became the first Vietnamese bishop of the Catholic Church in Vietnam. Before him, every bishop in the country had been French or European. It was a historic turning point in making the Church in Vietnam Vietnamese.

As for the color, common sources say the church was painted pink around 1957. There is no clear official explanation for the choice. One theory is that pink stands for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a red heart joined with purity. Whatever the reason, pink has belonged to the church ever since, and it is repainted from time to time to keep it so.

At Christmas, on the night of December 24, the church is richly decorated and thousands of people come here. Hai Bà Trưng Street fills with crowds. Yellow lights fall on the pink wall, and the bells, five and a half tons in all, ring out across the Saigon night.