During the last weekend of August 2021, Fr. Michael Agliardo, Director of the USCCA, spoke at all 11 Masses at Christ Cathedral in the Diocese of Orange. The Cathedral parish is a vibrant community which hosts four Vietnamese Masses, three English, three Spanish, and one Chinese. The Vietnamese priests very graciously assisted Fr. Michael in getting his message out, since he does not speak Vietnamese.
Fr. Michael enlightened Mass participants to the challenges Catholics face in China as society changes and modernizes, and he promoted the mission of the USCCA. He also shared images from Lu Nan’s photo essay on China’s Catholics, On the Road, encouraging the faithful in each of the groups he spoke with to reflect on the place of Christian faith in their history. Who passed the faith on to them? Spanish speakers from Latin America, the Vietnamese faithful, and those other Americans who attended the English Mass all drew inspiration from the experience of their fellow Catholics in China.