Brother Marcel Van

The inspirational life story of the Vietnamese Redemptorist Marcel Van, who was to die in a North Vietnamese prison-camp in 1959. The first steps towards his Beatification were begun in 1984. Born in 1928 into a modest family, against a background of endless personal trials, Marcel Van wished to become a priest. Therese of Lisieux chose him as her disciple par excellence of ‘the little way’; Van, my little brother, just as you consider me as a saint according to your own heart, in the same way also you are truly for me a soul entirely according to my own heart…Your vocation will always be that of the hidden Apostle of Love . If, because of poor health, Therese was unable to go to Hanoi, her heart remained in Vietnam - the eldest daughter of the Church in the Far East (Pius XI, 1933). Van was to give up his wish to become a priest and enter the Hanoi monastery as a humble Redemptorist brother; Jesus confided an mission to me, that of turning suffering into joy …My joy is to love and to be loved . Combining an extreme sensitivity with an inane but saint-like audacity, his life was spent in silence against a backcloth of political turmoin until his death in the prison-camp. Foreword by Mgr F.-X. NGUYEN VAN THUAN