A humble servant for Atlanta

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

For someone who escaped South Vietnam by boat with his family in 1975, Bishop-elect John-Nhan Van Tran is familiar with the road less traveled.

His mother died when he was 2. His father circumvented an 18-year sentence imposed by the Vietnamese communist government by escaping from prison. His older brother was killed in the Vietnam War after stepping on a landmine. His younger brother died of cancer.

And, on Thursday, Dec. 6, 2001, then-Father Tran was scheduled to join his priest buddies – Msgr. John Nguyen Phuc, his first cousin, and Father Benedict Joseph Quang – on a fishing outing in Golden Meadow in Lafourche Parish. Father Tran had to miss the fishing trip to attend a meeting of the archdiocesan Presbyteral Council, of which he was a member.

Time stood still
As the meeting ended, messages began pouring into Father Tran’s cell phone: His two priest friends were missing, and their boat couldn’t be found.

“I was supposed to go with the two of them a couple of days earlier, but they changed the date, and I couldn’t go,” Bishop-elect Tran recalled last week, preparing for his final retreat before his Jan. 23 ordination as auxiliary bishop of Atlanta.

As it turned out, one of the priests was believed to have fallen overboard into 5 feet of water – neither priest could swim and neither was wearing a lifejacket – and the other took off his shirt in an attempt to save the other but also went under. Their bodies were found a day later after Father Tran gave Lafourche Parish deputies a general idea of the area where they normally fished.

“It was a tragic time – tragic for the families and tragic for the parishioners and for the archdiocese,” Bishop-elect Tran said.

Earned people’s trust
Throughout his 30 years as a priest, Bishop-elect Tran has earned the steadfast love and trust of the people he has served by going above and beyond the norm of pastoral care. In addition to celebrating the sacraments, working side-by-side with parishioners, he has gutted hurricane-ravaged homes, patched and fallen off roofs, cut grass, pulled weeds, fixed cars and driven relief supplies cross-country to help those in need.

“I’ve always said that whatever you can do, you need to do,” he said. “I guess that’s how God wired me. 

Never blinked, just acted

When a priest friend from Oklahoma – Father Thanh Van Nguyen – was in dialysis in 2015 and in dire need of a kidney transplant, Bishop-elect Tran stepped up to get tested to see if he might be a match and then donated a kidney, telling his immediate family of his decision only after the fact.

“The decision to donate was based on the fact that I knew he was on dialysis three days a week,” Bishop-elect Tran said. “I had been on visits to hospitals and had seen how people could live on one kidney, so that didn’t concern me. There was no other reason than that. I could do it. I thank God that that’s the way he made me, because it’s given me a lot of peace in daily living. The only reason is that God made me that way – not that I made an effort to do it.”

Bishop-elect Tran will be ordained as Atlanta’s third auxiliary bishop on Jan. 23 at 1 p.m. (CST) at St. Peter Chanel Church in Roswell, Georgia.

(The Ordination Mass will be livestreamed at https://livestream.com/archatl/bishoptran)


Atlanta Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer will be the principal ordaining bishop, and New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond and Archbishop-Emeritus Alfred Hughes will be the co-ordaining bishops. Bishop-elect Tran will join Auxiliary Bishops Joel Konzen and Bernard Shlesinger in serving Atlanta’s exploding Catholic population of 1.2 million. 

After spending most of his life in New Orleans, the road ahead is a bit unfamiliar, but that has not fazed him in the past.

“I still actually need a map for the chancery,” he said jokingly, referring to the winding three-story, archdiocesan office building in Smyrna, about a 40-minute drive north of downtown Atlanta (depending on the traffic). 

Instead of being ordained at Christ the King Cathedral in the northern Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Bishop-elect Tran will join hundreds of others inside Atlanta’s largest church – St. Peter Chanel – for the Mass of Ordination. Roswell is about one hour north of Atlanta.

“That’s without traffic,” Bishop-elect Tran said, smiling. “I went to a Serra Club meeting, and it was only eight miles away from the chancery, and it took us at least 20 minutes to get there. Thank God for the iPhone, but, the thing is, with the iPhone, you can become an idiot – you don’t even know the street.”

Will oversee ministries
After initial meetings with Archbishop Hartmayer, Bishop-elect Tran believes his major responsibilities, besides presiding at confirmations, will be to oversee the work of several designated ministries within the archdiocese, including Catholic Charities and the Metropolitan Tribunal.

“Basically, all of the offices in the chancery have been divided up, so each of (the three auxiliary bishops) will be overseeing certain offices there,” Bishop-elect Tran said. “I also have some school Masses that have already been assigned to me.”

There are more than a dozen Vietnamese priests in the Atlanta Archdiocese, and he has met already with them, but Bishop-elect Tran will not be working exclusively with them as part of his ministry.

Saying goodbye was tough
Since the surprise Oct. 25 announcement of his appointment to the episcopacy, Bishop-elect Tran has focused on buttoning up any remaining loose ends at Mary Queen of Peace Parish in Mandeville, where he has served since 2014. 

He credits his parish staff and parishioners in general with making a difficult transition easier.

“There’s been a lot of day-to-day activities, nothing that I really had to finalize,” Bishop-elect Tran said. “The parishioners are very active. They want to grow spiritually, and they are very involved. The good thing is we have a lot of professionals there, and a lot comes from that. They have been very helpful. Mary Queen of Peace is what it is today mainly because of the parishioners. They not only share what they would like to have happen, but they are also involved in it.” 

His leave-taking from Mary Queen of Peace led to another incredibly challenging moment. Bishop-elect Tran was scheduled to celebrate his “farewell” Mass at the parish on Dec. 11 at 2 p.m. Earlier that day, one of his longtime altar servers, Harmony Waller, 19, did not show up for her regular 8 a.m. Mass assignment.

“I thought that was a little unusual because she’s really good about serving that Mass,” Bishop-elect Tran said.

It wasn’t until after the 2 p.m. farewell Mass – when he was checking his phone after the reception – that Bishop-elect Tran saw several text messages that indicated Waller had been involved in an accident on her way from Slidell to Mandeville. Waller’s mother also was attending the 2 p.m. Mass, thinking she would meet her daughter there. Her mother had left her cell phone in the car and also had no idea about the accident.

“By the time I saw the messages, I left and went to the hospital to visit her and her family,” Bishop-elect Tran said. “The doctors said she was brain dead, and they kept her body alive for organ donations. She had been serving Mass since she was in the fifth grade.”

Bishop-elect Tran traveled to Atlanta for one week and then returned to celebrate Waller’s Funeral Mass the following weekend.

“It was hard,” he said.

Asking God for guidance
As for the blank canvas that lies ahead, Bishop-elect Tran said he is simply trusting God for direction.

“Someone asked me if I was nervous, and I said, ‘I don't know any better to be nervous.’ But one thing I always believe in is that, first of all, it’s his church, it’s not my church. Because it is his church, my prayer is that he will provide me with whatever help that I need in order to effectively serve the people of God. Over the years, I’ve always found that to be true, and that’s why my motto is ‘God will provide.’ And, of course, it just so happens to be on the top of the doorpost at (Notre Dame) seminary.

“I always believe that God will provide. God will provide by sending you people along the way who will assist you in serving the church. That’s what gives me peace as I move forward into the unknown.”

Bishop-elect Tran said he told Archbishop Aymond that he had “a better chance of winning the Powerball without buying a ticket than being a bishop.”

“So, why the calling? I have no idea,” he said. “And, I will find out when I die. But as far as what lies ahead, I can only surrender my life and put my life in God’s hands, and he will provide me with whatever is necessary. The only thing I can do on my end is to try to do it to the best of my ability. That’s what gives me comfort.”

pfinney@clarionherald.org