BAY RIDGE — When Father Randy Nguyen got off the plane at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam after a 27-hour flight from New York, he was tired but also felt immediately at home, and in a sense, he was.

Father Nguyen, parochial vicar for St. Patrick’s Church in Bay Ridge, was ordained in 2024 as the first Vietnamese-American priest serving in the Diocese of Brooklyn. So, he said it was the trip of a lifetime for him to travel to Vietnam for the first time in February.

It was a chance for him to discover his roots. He was accompanied on the two-week trip – from Feb. 10-23 – by his mother, Chau Thi Bui. She spent her early years in Vietnam before fleeing to the United States after the Vietnam War. She was born to a Vietnamese mother and an American GI father.

On the trip, Father Nguyen met aunts, uncles, and cousins for the first time and visited Catholic sites, including Marian shrines and churches.

“It was very touching. … because before, I was able to see Vietnam through stories, pictures, YouTube, and online. But really, being there surprised me,” he recalled. “It was interesting to me to see my home country for the first time.”

To start his visit, a cousin met Father Nguyen at the airport and presented him with sunflowers — which the Vietnamese associate with resilience and growth.

Father Nguyen said one of the biggest thrills of the trip was celebrating Mass in Vietnamese at a church in Buon Ma Thuot, a city in Dak Lak Province in Central Vietnam, where his mom had lived as a girl.  

“Standing at the altar, praying in the language of my ancestors, and looking out at the faces of those who had worshiped in that same church for generations was a humbling and emotional experience for me,” Father Nguyen recalled. 

“And at the end, I told them that I was born in America,” he said. “They were very surprised at how good my Vietnamese was … and a lot of people said they were very touched.”

To his amusement, Father Nguyen found that he was something of a local celebrity. 

“They wanted to take pictures with me because they had never seen an American priest from America,” he said.

Father Nguyen said the Marian shrines and churches he visited were fascinating, largely because they demonstrated the strong faith of Vietnam’s Catholic population, which he called “pretty remarkable,” given that only 7% of the country is Catholic. 

One of his favorite sites was the shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Mang Den, also known as the “Handless Virgin,” featuring a statue of the Blessed Mother with no hands, although the reasons for why are unclear. The statue, located in Kon Tum, a city 500 miles from Ho Chi Minh City, was erected in 1971. It was discovered with severed hands deep in the jungle after the Vietnam War.

Father Nguyen noted the shrine has become a major tourist attraction.

“My mom was able to visit that Marian shrine a few years ago, and it wasn’t what it is now – it was just a statue in the middle of nowhere,” he explained. “Now there’s a church. There’s a shrine. People have been donating to that shrine, and a lot more people have been coming.” 

He also visited a cathedral in the Diocese of Kon Tum in Central Vietnam, made entirely of wood. No nails were used in the construction process, which took place between 1913 and 1918 when Vietnam was a French colony.

The peaceful country Father Nguyen found is a far cry from the war-torn nation of the 1960s and early 1970s. “Of course, this was way before I was born, but the Vietnam War was very devastating. A lot of people had to flee the country,” he said, adding that older Vietnamese still have vivid memories of the conflict and its aftermath.

After more than a decade of war, the United States left Vietnam in 1975, and the Vietcong took control of the country. 

“Things are different now,” he said. “Vietnam was a communist, and it’s still communist, but times have changed.”

His visit wasn’t all sightseeing. He also took time out to visit the sick and homebound, including a frail elderly woman who had been abandoned by her family.

Still, there was also a lot of joy during the journey. Dak Lak Province, where his relatives live, is known as the “Coffee Capital” of Vietnam for its coffee beans, of which he brought bags home.

“It’s good coffee,” Father Nguyen said with a smile.