Statue of Our Lady of Bai Dau to tour Vietnamese communitites in US and Canada.
Through the remainder of 2005 and into 2006, the statue will make a pilgrimage throughout the United States and Canada. In communities that will host the statue, local Knights and Vietnamese Catholics will lead a Marian prayer service.
Our Lady of Bai Dau has special meaning to many Vietnamese Catholics. In the coastal city of Vung Tau, Vietnam, near Ho Chi Minh City, there is a shrine dedicated to her. The shrine features a 65-foot-tall statue of Mary holding aloft the infant Jesus, as if she is presenting him to the world.
After the fall of Saigon to the communists in 1975, as tens of thousands of Vietnamese fled their homeland by boat from Vung Tau, the statue of Our Lady of Bai Dau was the last image many of them had of their homeland. She is honored as the "mother of refugees."
