Vietnamese priests in the US are being referred to as the “new Irish”, according to an article in the California Catholic Daily. The article points out that the Irish-born accounted for 80% of the priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s; their places have now been taken by Latin Americans, Nigerians, and people from South and Southeast Asia.
“Vietnamese priests are filling the gap,� Ryan Lilyengren, a spokesman for the diocese of Orange, told the Los Angeles Times. “People are calling them the new Irish.�
Vietnamese Catholics number only about 300,000 (or about 1% of US Catholics), but they along with other Asian seminarians make up 12% of the nation’s seminarians.