U.S. cardinal arranged Vietnam meeting

VATICAN CITY - U.S. Cardinal Bernard F. Law helped finalize plans for the first ever meeting of a president of communist Vietnam with a pope, according to a U.S. government cable appearing on the WikiLeaks web site.

Law visited Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, in 2009 to meet with government officials and discuss bilateral relations between the Vatican and Vietnam, the cable said. “It took a visit to Vietnam last week by American Cardinal Bernard Law to finalize arrangements to allow the visit (of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet) to go forward,” said the cable dated Dec. 4, 2009, released on the WikiLeaks web site Aug. 30.

During a meeting with a top-level staff member of the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican, Law said the Vietnamese “expressed little interest in formal diplomatic relations, but considerable interest in ensuring the already announced visit would go forward.” 

Law had been involved in Vietnamese issues for decades. In 1991, he led the first high-level U.S. Catholic Church group to visit Vietnam at the invitation of the Vietnamese government since 1975.