Auxiliary Bishop Laurence Chu Van Minh of Hanoi pictured last December. (CNS/Reuters)

Details of Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the Holy Land in May were released this week.

The Pope’s proposed itinerary had not been previously disclosed in detail, but his plan to make the Holy Land trip has been known for some time.

A more surprising possible papal trip has also been discussed by a Vatican official this week: Vietnam.

“Could the Pope make a historic visit to communist Vietnam later this year?” the Reuters FaithWorld blog wondered in this entry posted today. “A papal envoy hinted at this on Thursday, as Vietnam and the Vatican are seriously discussing establishing diplomatic ties. ‘This is my wish,’ Vatican Undersecretary of State Monsignor Pietro Parolin told reporters when asked if he thought the Pope could visit the Southeast Asian country this year. He added that the question had not been discussed in meetings with the Foreign Ministry and government’s religious affairs committee.”

The relationship between the Vietnamese Church and the country’s Communist rulers is an uneasy one at best, and it has taken a turn for the worse in recent months as the Register reported in this article we published last fall.

So many obstacles would have to be overcome in order for the Holy Father to travel there this year, not least among them the fact that Vietnam is one of the few countries in the world that has no formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See.

There is no official state-controlled Catholic Church in Vietnam, unlike in neighboring China where the government-controlled Patriotic Church professes loyalty to Beijing rather than Rome and exists uneasily alongside an “underground” Catholic Church led by bishops who accept the Pope’s authority.

But FaithWorld notes that the less complicated situation in Vietnam isn’t necessarily an asset in persuading the Vietnamese government to extend an invitation to Benedict:

“Unlike in China, where the state keeps its thumb on religion through a Communist Party-backed ‘patriotic’ church and organizations, there is no direct state intervention in Vietnam and Catholics are loyal to the Vatican.  That makes the Catholic Church the largest organization in Vietnam outside of the ruling Communist Party, which views the church as a threat to its monopoly on political power. The Vietnamese government keeps close tabs on religious organizations and curtails the activities of adherents.”