Among Catholic priests, Vietnamese are the new Irish

Crossing the Pacific in a dilapidated boat, 10-year-old Bich Vu had a face-off with God. “If you save me and my family,” he promised nearly three decades ago, “my life will be yours.”

The miracle happened, and Vu, now 39, kept his word by becoming a priest.

“My experience on the ocean,” he says, “made my faith grow stronger. It taught me that I was weak. I couldn’t save myself; I had to depend on God.”

Vu, known to parishioners at Anaheim’s St. Boniface Catholic Church as Father Augustine, is part of a wave of immigrant Vietnamese priests helping ease a critical cleric shortage and changing the face of the Roman Catholic Church.

“Vietnamese priests are filling the gap,” said Ryan Lilyengren, a spokesman for the Diocese of Orange. “People are calling them the new Irish.”

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Daughter, 9, describes preacher’s slaying

SELMER, Tennessee (AP) — The 9-year-old daughter of a Tennessee preacher’s wife testified Monday at her mother’s murder trial that she heard a “big boom” coming from her parents’ room, then saw her father on the ground.

“I went to mama and daddy’s room to see what had happened. I saw daddy laying on the floor face down,” Patricia Winkler said.

The girl kept her composure as she described her father’s death, but just after taking the stand, she looked to her mother, Mary, and started crying when the prosecutor asked her for her name and birthday. Mary Winkler and several jurors also began weeping.

Matthew Winkler, a 31-year-old preacher at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in this west Tennessee town, was found dead in the parsonage where the family lived in March 2006. A day later, Mary Winkler was arrested on the Alabama coast 340 miles away, driving in the family minivan with Patricia and her two younger sisters.

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