page_title: Religion in Vietnam
section_title: Catholicism
hierarchical_section_title: Religion in Vietnam / Christianity / Catholicism
caption_attribution_description: English: This Hanoi Church is designed similar to the architecture of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The special thing about this Church is that the space around the Cathedral is an ideal meeting place for local residents in Hanoi, especially youngsters, to get away from the hustle &amp; bustle of the city.
context_page_description: Long-established religions in Vietnam include the Vietnamese folk religion, which has been historically structured by the doctrines of Confucianism and Taoism from China, as well as a strong tradition of Buddhism. According to official statistics from the government, as of 2014 there are 24 million people identified with one of the recognised organised religions, out of a population of 90 million. Of these, 11 million are Buddhists, 6.2 million are Catholics, 4.4 million are Caodaists, 1.4 million are Protestants, 1.3 million are Hoahaoists, and there are 75,000 Muslims, 7,000 Bahá'ís, 1,500 Hindus and other smaller groups. Traditional folk religions have experienced a rebirth since the 1980s.
  According to estimates by the Pew Research Center in 2010, most of the religious Vietnamese practiced folk religions. 16.4% were Buddhists, 8.2% were Christians, and about 30% were unaffiliated to any religion. Officially, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an atheist state as declared by its communist government.
context_section_description: By far the most widespread Christian denomination in Vietnam, Roman Catholicism first entered the country through Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in the 16th century, although these earliest missions did not bring very impressive results. Only after the arrival of Jesuits, who were mainly Italians, Portuguese, and Japanese, in the first decades of the 17th century did Christianity begin to establish its positions within the local populations in both domains of Đàng Ngoài (Tunchino) and Đàng Trong (Cocincina). Two priests Francesco Buzomi and Diogo Carvalho established the first Catholic community in Hội An in 1615. Between 1627–30, Avignonese Alexandre de Rhodes and Portuguese Pero Marques converted more than 6,000 people in Tonkin.
  17th-century Jesuit missionaries including Francisco de Pina, Gaspar do Amaral, Antonio Barbosa, and de Rhodes developed an alphabet for the Vietnamese language, using the Latin script with added diacritic marks. This writing system continues to be used today, and is called chữ Quốc ngữ (literally "national language script"). Meanwhile, the traditional chữ Nôm, in which Girolamo Maiorica was an expert, was the main script conveying Catholic faith to Vietnamese until the late 19th century.
  Since the late 17th century, French missionaries of the Foreign Missions Society and Spanish missionaries of the Dominican Order were gradually taking the role of evangelisation in Vietnam. Other missionaries active in pre-modern Vietnam were Franciscans (in Cochinchina), Italian Dominicans & Discalced Augustinians (in Eastern Tonkin), and those sent by the Propaganda Fide. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Catholicism successfully integrated into Vietnamese society and culture.
  The French missionary priest Pigneau de Behaine played a role in Vietnamese history towards the end of the 18th century by befriending Nguyễn Ánh, the most senior of the ruling Nguyễn lords to have escaped the rebellion of the Tây Sơn brothers in 1777. Becoming Nguyễn Ánh's loyal confidant, benefactor and military advisor during his time of need, he was able to gain a great deal of favor for the Church. During Nguyễn Ánh's subsequent rule as Emperor Gia Long, the Catholic faith was permitted unimpeded missionary activities out of his respect to his benefactors. By the time of the Emperor's accession in 1802, Vietnam had 3 Catholic dioceses with 320,000 members and over 120 Vietnamese priests.
  The Catholic Church in Vietnam today consists of 27 dioceses organized in 3 ecclesiastical provinces. Ecclesiastical sources report there are about 7 millions Catholics, representing 7.0% of the total population. The government census of 2019 shows smaller figures, but it indicates that Catholicism, for the first time, is the largest religious denomination in Vietnam, surpassing Buddhism.
caption: St. Joseph's Cathedral, Hanoi.
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