More than 120 years old, Phat Diem Church, a complex of 20 architectural structures, is located in Phat Diem Township, Kim Son District, Ninh Binh Province. Dubbed by many journals and tourists as the ‘Capital of Vietnam Catholicism,’ it was recognized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism a National Cultural and Historical Heritage Site in 1988.‘The Phat Diem Church complex occupies an area of 20ha, its main structures being six chapels, a bishop edifice, a bell-tower, a theater, a museum of traditions, an artificial mount, two caves and a pond,’ according to the website of the church.
ROCK BUILDINGS ON SOFT MUD
‘In 1865, Father Peter Tran Luc, an extraordinarily erudite scholar who was versed in both Chinese and Latin, was appointed the bishop of Phat Diem. Being called also the ‘Sixth Ender’ for his visionary wisdom, father Tran Luc decided to build the Phat Diem Church complex,’ the website reads.
‘To see the scale of the Sixth Elder’s vision, please be reminded that the area where the Church was built was just a marshland full of reeds at the time,’ Father Paul Bui Chu Tao preached in a Mass.
To build a huge complex of massive stone buildings with enormous wood logs on a muddy marshland, father Tran Luc and his parishioners had to spend a decade to prepare the materials.
According to the website the up-to-20 ton stones were taken from quarries 30-60 km away. Wood logs, some up to seven tons in weight, were brought from Nghe An, about 200 km away. The materials ready, the Sixth Elder began calculating and testing the sink ratio of the soil. ‘They dug wide ditches and drove millions of bamboo poles 20m, 30m into the ground, one on top of another, until it could go no deeper. Then they dumped crushed rocks on the ground and rammed them down with human or buffalo labor, layer after layer,’ father Bui Chu Tao described.
This story is from the April - May 2018 edition of Vietnam Heritage.
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This story is from the April - May 2018 edition of Vietnam Heritage.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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