Vatican City - The Vatican and Vietnam will aim to put decades of often troubled relations behind them on Thursday when Nguyen Tan Dung becomes the first Vietnamese prime minister to pay an official visit to the Holy See.
Vietnamese Catholics hope Mr Dung's talks with Pope Benedict XVI will bolster the national Church's legitimacy, paving the way for more rapid ordination of priests and greater support for Church activities.
"Most Catholic people in Vietnam are very excited about this news," said one Vietnamese Catholic businessman, who asked not to be identified. "It is a very good signal that the top authority of Vietnam is ready to meet and talk with the Pope. Vietnam wants to prove to the world that it is ready for openness."
According to Cardinal Pham Minh Man, archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam, Mr Dung's visit indicates the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Hanoi and the Vatican cannot be far off.
Some Vatican officials hope the two sides' careful approach to their difficulties could serve as a model for an even greater prize – the normalisation of relations between the Holy See and China, with which ties were broken off in 1951.
Vietnam's Communist rulers have eased their once strident disapproval of organised religion as Catholicism and Buddhism have flourished amid strong economic growth.
Hanoi has has been alarmed by the rapid growth of evangelical Protestantism among ethnic minorities in remote mountain regions and launched a crackdown to stem the growth of evangelical churches.
The government also maintains tight control over religious institutions associated with even officially-recognised religions like Catholicism on the basis that religious leaders could become rallying points for political opposition.
Hanoi approves new seminaries and the enrolment of seminarians, the organisation of religious classes and conferences, the construction and renovation of religious facilities, the ordination of priests and the promotion of clergy.
These controls constrain the Church's ability to ordain sufficient priests, and the Church is only tentatively beginning to provide social services, such as health clinics, as it did before communism.
"People are free to worship, go to mass and attend church for catechism classes, but the government has to give more freedom in some areas like education," the Catholic businessman said. "The Church is ready to open schools, and the government should let the Church do that."
Catholicism is Vietnam's second largest religion, with an estimated 6m-8m adherents, or up to 10 per cent of Vietnam's 84m people. Jesuit missionaries introduced it in the 17th century, and one, Alexandre de Rhodes, is credited with developing the Vietnamese alphabet.
Catholicism prospered under French colonial rule, and tensions between Catholics and Buddhists rose in the 1950s and 1960s when Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam and a Catholic, explicitly favoured the Catholic minority. After the Vietnam war and national reunification under communist rule in 1975, Hanoi nationalised most Church property, as it had done in northern Vietnam after 1954.
At first the communists viewed Catholicism suspiciously and as a "foreign" implant, resulting in empty churches and seminaries and fear among the faithful. But, since the late 1980s, economic reforms and the country's opening up to the outside world have yielded a growing tolerance of religion, a trend encouraged by the US, Vietnam's largest trading partner. Restoration of some Church properties and the opening of a new seminary are among issues under discussion between the Vatican and Hanoi.
Hanoi appears to recognise there is a role for religious groups in providing welfare services. For example, authorities urged them last year to play a greater part in the fight against HIV/Aids.
The businessman said the Church would like to open private hospitals, which have recently been permitted in Vietnam. "The government should have an open mind on this point," he said. "If the government allows it, it is a recognition of the contribution to the Church not just in spirituality, but in terms of physical help for the poor."