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Though Buddhists and Catholics have long been political antagonists, a number of pagodas and churches have been turned into refugee centers, open to Vietnamese of either faith. A school operated by the Roman Catholic Salesian Fathers in the Go Vap district of Saigon, for example, has taken in more than 16,000 homeless, most of them Buddhists. At a Buddhist primary school in Saigon, Catholic nuns organized a makeshift dispensary for the hundreds of refugee families sheltered there; the hallways of the school were stacked with cans of cooking oil, rice and clothing donated by Catholic Relief. The CRS director in Viet Nam, Father Robert Charlebois, 36, of Gary, Ind., joined a Protestant AID official in setting up a clinic near Bien Hoa in a pagoda. A Buddhist monk was their translator—and many of the medical supplies were provided by the Protestant-backed World Vision International.
*Half of them Americans, most of whom are Protestants; the next largest contingent is 131 French Catholic priests and nuns.