For more than four decades the church on the north shore of hồ Vị Xuyên stored fibre for a textile mill. It later held a cinema screen, and later a table-tennis club, while the grounds outside were let to a beer stand and a vehicle-repair yard. What the parish received back on 7 November 2008 was a neo-Romanesque shell whose walls had gone black.
The dedication is what makes the loss legible. The lakeside beside the old Vị Hoàng river is remembered as ground where Vietnamese Catholics were put to death under the anti-Christian edicts of the Nguyễn emperors, and in 1951 the parish took as its patron the title Nữ Vương Các Thánh Tử Đạo — Queen of the Martyrs. Pope John Paul II canonised 117 of the Vietnamese martyrs in 1988.
Relics of seventeen of those 117 were carried into the church around All Saints' Day 2023 and lie there with a relic of St Martin de Porres, the Dominican lay brother. The church was reconsecrated on 27 December 2014.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
Catholic Nam Định is Dominican country. The Order of Preachers serves the Diocese of Bùi Chu, and the villages south of the Đào river carry one of the highest Catholic populations in Vietnam. The delta is recorded as one of the early entry points of Catholicism in northern Vietnam, from the sixteenth century. Khoái Đồng is the odd one out: it is the only Bùi Chu parish on the west bank of that river, where every other parish belongs to the Archdiocese of Hanoi.
The friars broke ground on the lakeside site in 1922. Work on the church began in 1934 to plans drawn by the Order and stopped twice for want of money; the first Mass was said at Christmas 1941. What went up was neo-Romanesque — a single great vaulted nave, four bells — in the middle of a manufacturing city rather than out among the rice fields where most Bùi Chu churches stand.
The church was one building in a Dominican foundation of some 56,000 square metres planned in 1939. The Papal Seminary of St Albert the Great and the St Thomas Normal School stood on the same ground. Both passed to the state and are secular schools today, so a pilgrim who comes looking for a seminary at Khoái Đồng will not find one.
Then the church was taken. The parish's own account dates full state control from 1963; the Vietnamese Wikipedia article dates it to 1954, in the months after the Geneva Accords. Neither source disputes what followed: the nave became a fibre warehouse for the textile industry the city lived by, then a cinema, then a table-tennis hall, and the grounds were given over to a beer stand, a vehicle-repair station and a chemical cooperative. The parish had no resident priest between 1956 and 1959.
Nam Định was a manufacturing centre and a bombing target. According to the Vietnamese Wikipedia article on the church, American aircraft struck the Hàng Thao quarter nearby on 14 April 1966; the building came through it, though its walls were left completely blackened. The parish's own history does not mention the raid. The soot on the vault is what people in the city came to recognise the church by.
Petitions for the return of the building began in 1992 and took sixteen years. On 7 September 2008 the diocese received formal notice from the city authorities; the first handover followed on 7 November that year, and the grounds came back in June 2010, with the city keeping part of the land for a public park and for widening the street. Restoration work ended with the reconsecration of 27 December 2014.
The parish that came back into the building is a busy one. It runs more than twenty associations and some 500 children in its catechism classes, the second-largest programme in the Báo Đáp deanery, and the diocese now gives it major diocesan events to host.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Nam Định
Two churches stand 535 metres apart in the centre of the city, in two different jurisdictions — the Dominican shrine of the Diocese of Bùi Chu, and the parish church of the Archdiocese of Hanoi. Walking between them takes a few minutes.
Khoái Đồng Shrine of the Queen of Martyrs
Đền Nữ Vương các Thánh Tử đạo Khoái Đồng
The church sits on the north shore of hồ Vị Xuyên, the lake left by the old course of the Vị Hoàng river, with the water on one side and Lê Hồng Phong street on the other. Inside is one long vaulted nave, the Spanish Dominican design of 1934 carried out in a Romanesque idiom, and four bells overhead. The blackened vault was left legible through the restoration. Relics of seventeen Vietnamese martyr saints are kept here, together with a relic of St Martin de Porres, and the Dominicans serve the parish.
Church of the Immaculate Conception
Nhà thờ Lớn Nam Định
Everyone in Nam Định calls it the Big Church, though it is neither a cathedral nor a basilica. It grew out of a small chapel of the Paris Foreign Missions and was consecrated in 1895 in a neo-Gothic design, and it is the mother church of a parish of some 4,900 people in the Archdiocese of Hanoi. Bombing badly damaged it in 1968; repairs were finished in 1973. Its patronal feast is the Immaculate Conception, which it shares with the Bùi Chu basilica at Phú Nhai down the road.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Patronal Feast of the Queen of Martyrs — on or near 15 September
The parish keeps its patronal feast on or near 15 September, the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, whose theme — Mary's own martyrdom of the heart at the foot of the Cross — is what the title Queen of the Martyrs rests on. A concelebrated Mass is sung by the senior priest of the Báo Đáp deanery with visiting Dominican friars, clergy, religious and the parish associations, and the homily is preached on the meaning of the title.
Anniversary of the Church's Return — 7 November
The parish marks the anniversary of the day the church came back to Catholic worship with a commemorative Mass and parish celebrations, under a new name each year. This is a parish occasion rather than a diocesan pilgrimage.
Feast of the Vietnamese Martyrs — 24 November
The memorial of St Andrew Dũng-Lạc and his companions is the day the whole Vietnamese Church keeps its martyrs, and Khoái Đồng keeps it in the presence of the relics of seventeen of them. The parish Mass is arranged with the Catholic Students' Association of Nam Định, whose patrons the martyrs are; the parish celebration is not fixed to the calendar date.
Immaculate Conception — 8 December
The patronal feast of the Big Church, and the principal patron of the Diocese of Bùi Chu as well, so the day is kept across the whole of Catholic Nam Định.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Tru by Hilton Nam Dinh City Centre ⭐⭐⭐ — The closest verified hotel to the shrine, 650 metres away on Trần Hưng Đạo, the main street through the centre; about ten minutes on foot to either church. Reserve this hotel
Nam Cuong Nam Dinh Hotel (hotel) — A large full-service hotel of 182 rooms on the south-western edge of the centre, 1.5 km from the shrine, with its own restaurant. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
Khách sạn Dệt ⭐⭐⭐ — A small hotel of fifteen rooms near the Nam Định Museum, 1.6 km from the shrine and the plainest of the three. Reserve this hotel
🚗 Getting There
By Air: The nearest international airport is Nội Bài (HAN), which serves Hanoi, 96 km north-west of the shrine.
By Train: Nam Định station sits on the North–South railway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, 1.8 km west of the shrine. Trains from Hanoi take roughly two hours.
By Bus: Coaches for Nam Định leave Hanoi from Giáp Bát bus station, in the south of the capital.
By Car: Nam Định lies 90 km south-east of Hanoi. National Route 10 and National Routes 21A and 21B meet in the city; Routes 37 and 38B and the Hồ Chí Minh Highway serve the wider province.
Local Transport: The two churches are 535 metres apart in the city centre, an easy walk. Phú Nhai basilica and Bùi Chu cathedral lie about 20–25 km south-east, reached by taxi or hired car.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Fr. M. B. Cothonay, OP. Lives of Four Martyrs of Tonkin — A reprint of the 1911 original, giving the Dominican mission's own account of four of its religious put to death at Hà Nội in 1745 and 1773 — the tradition Khoái Đồng belongs to.
Peter C. Phan. Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam — The standard English study of the Jesuit who organised the Church in Tonkin and devised the romanised Vietnamese script. Orbis Books, 1998.
Charles Keith. Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation — A scholarly history of the Church in Vietnam from French colonial rule to a native hierarchy, the arc within which Khoái Đồng was built, confiscated and returned. University of California Press, 2012.
Online Resources:
Khoái Đồng parish, Diocese of Bùi Chu — The diocese's own parish record, with the dates of the patronal title and of the church's return (in Vietnamese).
Nhà thờ Khoái Đồng — The fullest reference article on the church, its confiscation and its restoration (in Vietnamese).
🎥 Recommended Videos
17 VỊ THÁNH TỬ ĐẠO ĐƯỢC KÍNH TẠI NHÀ THỜ KHOÁI ĐỒNG — The parish's own account of the seventeen martyr saints venerated in the church, filmed when their relics were received (in Vietnamese).
Giáo xứ Khoái Đồng - 17 năm Dấu Ấn Tình Yêu — A short parish documentary made for the anniversary of the church's return (in Vietnamese).
🔴Khoái Đồng-ngôi thánh đường đặc biệt| sự hồi sinh mạnh mẽ #nguoiconggiao — CÔNG GIÁO TV on the confiscation and the restoration of the church (in Vietnamese).
🔗 Useful Links
Khoái Đồng Parish — The shrine's own site, with parish news and reports of its feasts.
Diocese of Bùi Chu — The diocese that Khoái Đồng belongs to, covering the districts south of the Đào river.
Nam Định Parish, Archdiocese of Hanoi — The archdiocesan page for the Big Church.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Phú Nhai (24 km southeast) — The minor basilica of the Immaculate Conception, neo-Gothic, with the tomb of 83 martyrs of the parish in its grounds.
Bùi Chu Cathedral (about 21 km southeast) — The cathedral church of the diocese Khoái Đồng belongs to, in Xuân Trường.
So Kien (31 km west-northwest) — Vietnam's national pilgrimage centre of the Vietnamese Martyrs.
Hanoi (75 km north-northwest) — St Joseph's Cathedral, seat of the archdiocese that holds the Big Church.
La Vang (428 km south-southeast) — The national Marian shrine of Vietnam, in Quảng Trị province.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"The memory of their noble witness will help the People of God in Vietnam as a whole to put their charity into practice, to increase their hope and to consolidate their faith that is sometimes sorely tried by daily life."
— Pope Benedict XVI, Message to the President of the Vietnamese Bishops' Conference, 2009
