Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - Vietnamese Catholics have praised a milestone meeting between the communist nation's premier and
Pope Benedict XVI for bringing fresh hope to the country's six million worshippers.
"I am overjoyed about this meeting," said the bishop of Ho Chi Minh City, Huynh Cong Minh, who said his congregation had prayed for a positive outcome to the high-level talks in the
Vatican Thursday.
"The greatest wish of the Vietnamese Catholic Church is the establishment of normal ties... Although it's already quite late for normalisation, I hope that it will come as soon as possible."
Vietnam, a former French colony, has Southeast Asia's largest Catholic community after the Philippines, but all religious activity remains under the control of the regime that has run unified post-war Vietnam since 1975.
The Hanoi government has distrusted Christian communities for years but started a dialogue in the 1990s with the Catholic church that led up to the meeting this week between the pontiff and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
Both sides later said they would work toward full bilateral relations.
A Vietnamese government statement issued within hours of the Vatican meeting stressed that Vietnam's Catholic community "loves their country and have made a positive contribution toward national development."
The news was hailed by Catholic worshippers, many of whose families fled to southern Vietnam and the largest city, formerly called Saigon, after the communist and atheist government first took over North Vietnam in the 1950s.
"The common aspiration of Catholic followers is to be free to practice their religion, and for the authorities to really respect our religion," said Do Thi Lan, a 46-year-old street-side baguette vendor.
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and religious freedom organisations regularly criticise Vietnam for repressing religious groups, including some dissident Buddhist and Protestant Christian communities.
Many state officials in Vietnam, like their comrades in neighbouring China, still regard Catholics' allegiance to the pope, and other religious activities, as potential threats to the ruling communist party's authority.
But in a gradual thaw, Vietnam has granted Catholics greater freedoms, highlighted by the ordination of 57 priests in Hanoi in November 2005, an event attended by a Vatican cardinal and thousands of followers.
Two months ago US President George W. Bush joined a mixed Protestant-Catholic congregation in a Hanoi service, saying later that "there's no more basic freedom than the freedom to worship as you see fit."
Father Fero Nguyen Quang Toan of Ho Chi Minh City's Vuon Xoai church saw progress toward greater freedom, saying the Vatican meeting helped "improve the prestige, spirit and voice of the church's religious and social activities."
"We hope that the pope will help the Vietnamese church, especially in its support of children, women and the poor," added the priest, who had a portrait of the current Roman Catholic Church leader on his office wall.
In the capital Hanoi, Catholics also praised the meeting and expressed hope it would help end discrimination that they say was oppressive in the post-war years and continues to a lesser extent today.
"When I was small, I openly went to church with my parents, but in the post-war period it became much, much more difficult," said a 60-year-old Catholic man who asked not to be identified.
"Everybody in our neighbourhood knows my family is Catholic, but in that time we had to hide our religion from strangers as much as possible. We did not go to church often. We only prayed and read the Bible inside our house."
He said that today some state institutions still disciminate against Catholics when it comes to jobs and services.
"They don't publicly refuse us, because it's a sensitive matter... But we all sense it, and everyone knows it," he said. "These days life is much better, but we can't say we have religious freedom yet in Vietnam."