About 2 years ago, during my stay in Ho Chi Minh City, friends brought me to some building facilities that had belonged more than 35 years ago to the Jesuits. The place had been a students' hostel and Library, a TV stadio and public Chapel. Thousands of young people gathered there and right after the War, when the new regime was established, the facilities were confiscated. Luckily enough, with the passing of time the relations between religious groups, including the Catholic Church, and the present government improved and Church facilities and property started to be given back. That was the case with this Church property in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City.

According to the Tabloid ASIA FOCUS News service Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid an informal visit to Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of Hanoi, on the morning of 30 December 2007. The visit came after Archbishop Kiet issued a message (15 December) urging local Catholics to pray for the government to return the former Vatican's Nunciature which the communist government confiscated in 1959. In fact, thousands of Catholics had been marching in processions to the compound for several days. Archbishop Kiet received the Prime Minister in his living room where they talked together. This was, certainly, a positive sign of the government's concern for religious issues.

A few days later thousands of people gathered in a candlelit prayer service and Mass at a big Church in Ho Chi Minh to pray for the government to return a 14,000 square-meter land that had belonged to the Thai Ha parish church in Hanoi, where a state-run garment company had occupied the plot since 1959 and had started to build houses. For weeks, thousands of people continued to occupy the premises that were confiscated and renewed their protests, asking the government to return property it took from the Church.

During the Tet Festival that runs February 7-9 many people gathered at the plot to sing hymns and say prayers. They also talked and shared food with security officials. BBC News on 26 February reported on the demands for returning Church property in Vietnam.

Industrial development projects require land that belongs to farmers and ethnic groups and as, a result, opposition movements are increasingly active. According to the Vietnamese communist establishment land property rights belong only to the State. Thus, the use of land does not give a legal right to ownership. Church property, in the middle of cities, like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh, has a very high economic value. Its return brings very real problems and conflict, between the actual users and the former owners.

Again, a new issue has come into the open. The patriotic Buddhist Association has also asked for the return of temples' property. They have also started to demand compensation for the property the old French colonial government confiscated in old times.