The Vietnamese harbor a tender devotion to Our Lady of La Vang who is the compassionate advocate of her suffering children.  She first appeared to them in 1798 and appeared many times throughout the next one hundred years, during the persecution of the Catholics.  The Vatican considers the tortures that the Vietnamese martyrs (more than 100,000) endured during those years to be among the worst in Christian history.  Their limbs were cut off joint by joint, their flesh burned with red-hot tongs, drugs were forced upon them to enslave their minds and many had their faces cruelly branded with the words “ta dao” (Sinister Religion).           
     
In 1798 the persecuted people took flight to the mountains midway between North and South Vietnam, in what is now the Quảng Trị Province, with peaks between 4,000 and 8,000 feet.  The highlands are flanked by steep slopes, sharp crests, narrow valleys, and covered mainly by a dense broadleaf evergreen forest. There, in the jungle, they prepared themselves for martyrdom, where they suffered cold, hunger, illness and were threatened by the beasts in the forest. They gathered in a grassy area near a banyan tree nightly to pray the rosary, begging for Our Lady’s help.

One night a beautiful Lady appeared, clad in white and surrounded by light, holding the Infant Jesus in her arms with two angels at her side bearing torches.  Though she was wearing a crown, she was simply dressed with a long cape.  She walked on the ground back and forth several times then stopped and spoke.  Comforting them in a sweet voice she said, "My children, what you have asked of me, I have granted you, and henceforth whoever comes to this place to pray to me, I will listen to  them."     Our Lady of La Vang advised them to boil the leaves from the surrounding trees to use as medicine.  Then she vanished.  All who were present witnessed the vision and were greatly consoled.