Five Loaves and Two Fish CTS booklet

In 1975, Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan was arrested by the Communist government of Vietnam and imprisoned for thirteen years, nine of them in solitary confinement, and then finally exiled from Vietnam in 1991.

Always reticent about speaking of himself, Cardinal Nguyen slowly began to realise that his prison experience of suffering and hope could help others in their journey of faith. The reflections he prepared for the 1997 World Youth Day in Paris became the framework for Five Loaves & Two Fish; the content is his personal Magnificat for the wonders God had worked in and through the small offering of his life - like the fish and loaves in the Gospel, which fed thousands.