Father Joseph Long Nguyen

Father Nguyen was found dead on 27 October 2026 in the rectory of Our Lady of La Vang Parish in Hallandale Beach, Florida. He was 62. His death was announced by the Archdiocese of Miami, which published an obituary the same day. No cause of death was made public, and funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the announcement.

Joseph Long Nguyen was born on 25 April 1964 in Vietnam. A 2014 Archdiocese of Miami profile gave his birthplace as Docmo. He was one of eight children raised in a devout Catholic family, and in a personal biography he recalled how his parents' religious devotion and the family's nightly prayers shaped his faith from childhood.

After graduating from high school in 1982 he entered the seminary in Saigon, answering what he described as God's call to the priesthood. He completed his philosophy and theology studies in 1990, but Archbishop Paul Binh van Nguyen of Saigon was unable to obtain government permission to ordain him. From 1992 to 1997 he served in parishes of the Archdiocese of Saigon, including Ninh Phat and Thanh Da.

In 1998 he left Vietnam for Toronto, where he continued his academic and pastoral formation at St. Augustine's Seminary under the sponsorship of the Archdiocese of Toronto. He was ordained a priest on 11 May 2002 and served for about a year as associate pastor at Nativity of Our Lord Church in Toronto.

In August 2003 he had to leave Canada after his religious worker visa was refused because of an administrative oversight. Because he had been ordained without the approval of Vietnam's government, he could not return home. He travelled to Bangkok to seek permission to re-enter Canada and was refused. With the approval of Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic of Toronto he looked for a new diocese, and with help from Bishop Dominic Luong Mai, then auxiliary bishop of Orange, California, he obtained a religious worker visa and entered the United States on 22 December 2003.

In the Diocese of Orange he served at Blessed Sacrament Church in Westminster from March 2004 to July 2005, Holy Spirit Church in Fountain Valley from July 2005 to July 2007, and St. Callistus Church in Garden Grove from July 2007, celebrating Mass in Vietnamese and English.

He came to the Archdiocese of Miami in November 2011, taking over the Vietnamese apostolate that December and serving as parochial vicar at St. Helen Parish in Fort Lauderdale and chaplain at St. John's Rehab until 2014. That year the Vietnamese community agreed to buy the former St. Charles Borromeo Church in Hallandale Beach, and he was appointed administrator of Our Lady of La Vang Mission on 15 July 2014. Archbishop Thomas Wenski dedicated the mission in December 2014. On 2 July 2023 the archbishop elevated it to a personal parish serving Catholics of Vietnamese descent across the archdiocese and installed Father Nguyen as its first pastor. He described the new title as a change in title rather than responsibilities.

Father Nguyen spoke Vietnamese, English and French. He chose St. Joseph as his patron saint and often spoke of the Vietnamese devotion to Our Lady of La Vang. In 2014 he said he hoped to turn the garden at the Hallandale Beach church into a meditation garden.

The Vietnamese Catholic apostolate in the Archdiocese of Miami began in 1982 with about 25 families and spent decades worshipping in borrowed spaces, including the Schott Center in Pembroke Pines and St. Helen Church in Fort Lauderdale. Under Father Nguyen it gained its own church in 2014 and parish status in 2023. The parish became a gathering place for Christmas and Vietnamese New Year celebrations and for children learning both the faith and the Vietnamese language.