Ngo Quang Kiet

Who is Ngo Quang Kiet?

Joseph Ngô Quang Kiệt is the Archbishop Emeritus of Hanoi. In 1993, he studied at the Institut Catholique in Paris, France. He was appointed archbishop of Hanoi in 2005, succeeding Paul Joseph Pham Dinh Tung. Prior to his appointment as archbishop, he served as apostolic administrator in the Vietnamese capital.

In early 2010, then 57 year old Archbishop Ngo submitted his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI. The archbishop reportedly had been suffering from stress and insomnia. Ngo denied rumors that he had been pressured to step down after he asked Catholics in 2007 to pray for the government to return the former apostolic nunciature to the church. He also had criticized Hanoi city authorities for building a flower garden on the premises without local church approval. “I am personally under no pressure from any side,” the archbishop said in the interview, which was reported by UCA News, the Asian Catholic news agency. In 2008, the mayor of Hanoi had previously asked that the archbishop be removed from office.

AsiaNews, a Rome-based Catholic news agency, reported May 11 that the archbishop would step down and hypothesized that he would do so because Vietnam’s communist government made his ouster a condition for launching full diplomatic relations with the Vatican. For at least two years, AsiaNews said, Ngo “has been the focus of a regime campaign to have him removed. Indeed, the prelate has always supported the requests and the prayers of the faithful of Hanoi who suffer oppression, expropriation of land, churches and cemeteries, along with gratuitous violence.”