New pastor for St. James the Greater Parish

Friday, Aug. 21, 2015

VERNAL — Father Tai Nguyen became pastor of Saint James the Greater Parish in Vernal on Aug. 15. 

Since being ordained a priest five years ago, Fr. Nguyen has served as parochial vicar of St. George Parish in St. George. He is very patient and hard-working, said Monsignor Colin F. Bircumshaw, diocesan administrator.

“Many people in St. George really appreciate all he did. He works very hard, especially with the youth. He really rolls up his sleeves and works with the people,” Msgr. Bircumshaw said, giving as an example that last year Fr. Nguyen enrolled in a Spanish-language class at his own initiative to better serve the diocese, where about 80 percent of Catholics speak Spanish. 

Fr. Nguyen was born in Vietnam but fled the country as a young man and spent seven years in a refugee camp in the Philippines. His story “highlights just what a struggle it’s been for him to go into the priesthood,” Msgr. Bircumshaw said. 

One of eight children, Fr. Nguyen experienced life in Vietnam after the communists took over in 1975. Because of his faith, he was denied admittance into the music institute even though he ranked the fourth-highest on the entrance exam. 

He felt called to be a priest, but all of the country’s seminaries had been closed and church property confiscated. “The Vietnamese Catholic Church was persecuted,” he said, recalling his childhood religious education classes: “When we saw the police come, we went out another way – the back door – and ran away.”

His parents attempted to send their children out of the country singly or in pairs. Fr. Nguyen tried seven times to escape. Once he was caught and spent five months in prison, where he was beaten in an effort to make him reveal the name of the owner of the ship that he had been on. He refused to talk, because if he had revealed the name “the whole family would have been killed or put in prison,” he said.

In March of 1989 he again slipped out to sea on a tiny boat crammed with 71 people. For the first several days they were rocked by storms. Fr. Nguyen became so seasick that he had the dry heaves; he also was soaked to the skin and couldn’t get dry. When the storms passed, they were becalmed. The sun beat down on them. With no drinkable water, he finally dove into the ocean with his mouth open, trying to quench his thirst in the brine.

Relief came when they drifted into Filipino waters and were spotted by a fishing boat that towed them to shore.

In the refugee camp he experienced many types of kindness. “It touched my heart, those who helped the Vietnamese people,” said Fr. Nguyen, who decided to enter the seminary and become a priest “to render my gratitude to the Philippine people.” 

However, when his application to emigrate to the United States was accepted, he gave up the idea of becoming a priest and joined his twin brother in Atlanta, Georgia, thinking that he might go to school and become a nurse. His alternate plan was to volunteer at a parish for a few years and then ask the priest for a recommendation to a U.S. seminary.

“I prayed to God that ‘Whatever happens, it’s your will,’” he said.

His prayer was answered after he told one of his brother’s friends about wanting to be a priest. Two months later, he got a call from Father Dominic Thuy Dang Ha, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Kearns. Following a visit to Utah, he was accepted as a seminarian for the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

It wasn’t until a year later that Fr. Nguyen learned by chance that his brother’s friend was Fr. Ha’s nephew.

“He never told me,” Fr. Nguyen said.

After twice being called by God back to the priesthood, Fr. Nguyen believes that “who I am now is not my will, is not my want. It is God’s will; it’s God’s plan. God made me who I am now.”

When he was ordained a priest in 2010, his card contained a paraphrase of Mark 10:45 – “I come to serve, not to be served,” the motto he follows, he said.

Now, undertaking his new assignment, his plan is “to continue to build the parish in love, unity, peace, joy and happiness,” he said. “That is my goal.”