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FATHER QUYEN NGUYEN, FIRST VIETNAMESE CLARETIAN
 The Claretians ordained Father Quyen Nguyen, the very first Vietnamese priest in their order’s 158-year history. Several others from Quyen’s native land are also following the same path, pursuing their studies for the priesthood and brotherhood in the Claretian seminaries of Saigon and Manila .
The Claretian bishop of Lubbock, Texas, Placido Rodriguez, ordained Father Quyen Nguyen at San Gabriel Mission Parish, in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California during the 11:00 a.m. mass on Saturday, August 4, 2007 in the presence of a large assembly of family, friends, fellow parishioners and brother Claretians.
Thanks to last minute interventions his aged mother was finally able to obtain a visa in Vietnam to travel to the USA and be present on the day of her 46-year-old son’s entrance into the priesthood.
The rest of Father Quyen’s family is still in Vietnam . He himself was one of the last to escape his war torn native land in 1979 as an 18-year-old boat refugee.
 Vincentian Father Augustine Bihn Nguyen, whom Quyen met at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo , directed him to the Claretians, whose multi-ethnic parish in SanGabriel , California , hosts a very large Vietnamese community. Claretian Father Bert Billet was the vocation director who admitted him into the Claretian formation program as a seminarian.
Quyen studied first at the Claretian houses of studies at Oblate College in San Antonio , Texas , and later at the Chicago Theological Union, Chicago , Illinois with several other young Claretians preparing to be missionaries to the US and other parts of the world.
This missionary community, founded by St. Anthony Mary Claret in Spain in 1849, now has 3,110 members announcing the Gospel in every part of the world, and putting it into action in 66 different countries, with China , Indonesia and Vietnam among the newest areas of attention.
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