State Infiltration of the Church in Vietnam

The report Freedom of Worship: A False Reality in Vietnam was released in June 2026 by the International Christian Concern (ICC). It shows efforts by Vietnam's Communist Party to influence the Catholic Church through indirect means.
ICC is a Washington, D.C.-based "non-denominational" human rights advocacy nonprofit founded in 1995 to document the persecution of Christians worldwide.
The report argues that the Catholic Church occupies a unique position among Vietnam's religious communities. Unlike most other recognized religious organizations, it is not directly integrated into a state-controlled structure.
Three Control Strategies
According to the report, the Communist Party employs three principal strategies to control religious communities, drawing on a 2023 analysis by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
The first, substitution, involves outlawing historically independent religious organizations and replacing them with state-controlled alternatives, …More