Tha Rae, on the shore of Lake Nong Han: how Catholicism took root in Isan

On the edge of Lake Nong Han, some twenty kilometres from Sakon Nakhon, a boat-shaped cathedral towers over streets laid out with ruler-straight precision. Tha Rae is often described as the largest Catholic community in Thailand. Yet its story began modestly, in the mid-1880s, when some twenty families of Vietnamese and Lao converts, led by priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, crossed the lake to put distance between themselves and the local authorities. By setting the missionary archives alongside Thai scholarship and oral tradition, we can see how this precarious encampment became a parish, and later the seat of an archdiocese.

A Catholic village on the shore of the Nong Han

Highway 22 links Udon Thani with Nakhon Phanom. Following it, some twenty kilometres from Sakon Nakhon, the traveller comes upon a landscape rarely seen in north-eastern Thailand, or Isan. The streets are laid out in a grid. French colonial, Vietnamese and Chinese influences mingle on the façades. Rising above it all is a cathedral whose silhouette recalls the hull of a ship.

Tha Rae (ท่าแร่, sometimes transcribed ‘Tha Hae’) is a tambon, that is, an administrative sub-district, of Mueang Sakon Nakhon district. It lies on the northern shore of Lake Nong Han, about 21 kilometres from the town by road but only 6 kilometres across the water. It is also the seat of the Archdiocese of Tha Rae–Nong Saeng, whose cathedral is dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel.

In Isan, community life is usually organised around the wat, the Theravāda Buddhist monastery. Tha Rae, by contrast, grew up around a parish. This landscape is no mere stage set: it bears the imprint of a specific history, that of a small community of converts uprooted at the end of the nineteenth century who went on to become a lasting centre of Thai Catholicism.

To understand it, three layers of narrative must be distinguished:

• what the archives of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and Thai scholarship establish;
• what local tradition hands down;
• what remains uncertain.

The ‘Laos mission’: a project from Bangkok

Two priests for the North-East

It all began in 1881. Bishop Louis Vey, Vicar Apostolic of Siam, sent two priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society (Missions Étrangères de Paris, MEP), Constant Prodhomme and Xavier Guégo, to found what missionary sources call the ‘Laos mission’.

In the vocabulary of the day, the name referred to the lands of Lao language and culture on either side of the Mekong. It did not denote a state with fixed borders. The first centres chosen make this plain, as all of them lie in present-day Thailand: Ubon, Nakhon Phanom and Sakon Nakhon. A first community settled at Bung Kathae, near Ubon. In June 1883, Prodhomme and Father Rondel reached Nakhon Phanom, on the Mekong, for the first time.

François-Marie-Xavier Guégo was a Breton, born on 19 April 1855 at Lanfains, in the diocese of Saint-Brieuc. He arrived in Bangkok in December 1879. English-language media often mangle his name (‘Grego’, ‘Greco’), but the form attested in the MEP archives is indeed Guégo. In Thai he is known as khun pho Keko, khun pho meaning ‘father’, the term of respect used for priests.

Redeeming before baptising

One detail in the missionary archives sheds light on the social make-up of the early days. The first catechumens, that is, those preparing for baptism, were ‘redeemed slaves’. At the end of the nineteenth century, various forms of servitude still existed in Siam. The missionaries therefore bought the freedom of certain people, who became the first core of the faithful. The Jesuit magazine America confirms that many of Tha Rae's first Christians were former slaves.

This may be seen as one of the keys to the community's taking root, though it is an interpretation rather than a fact documented in detail. These men and women had been cut off from their original networks and owed their freedom to the mission. In the Christian community they found a new sense of belonging, social as much as religious. This initial dependence also explains why the community was able to move as a single body when circumstances demanded it.

1884: from Sakon Nakhon to the far shore of the lake

A first Christian community at the gates of the town

The first baptisms in Sakon Nakhon took place on 8 September 1884. They were celebrated in a temporary chapel standing between the lake and the town. According to the cultural database of the Thai Ministry of Culture, the site corresponds to that of the former Prasan cinema.

Another entry from the same ministry credits Prodhomme with founding this Catholic centre, before supposedly entrusting the community to ‘Father Xavier’, that is, Guégo. The MEP archives, for their part, credit Guégo with moving the group to Tha Rae. The two versions are easily reconciled: Prodhomme directed the mission, while Guégo looked after the community day to day.

Getting away from the ‘mandarins’

Why leave Sakon Nakhon only a few weeks or months after the first baptisms? The obituary of Father Joseph Combourieu, another MEP missionary, gives a sober answer. Life had become impossible ‘in the vicinity of the mandarins’, the term the missionaries used for the local authorities.

A master's thesis defended in 2023 at Mahasarakham University by Kerkkrit Chokchairatchada, devoted to the identity of the Tha Rae community, points in the same direction. It mentions a religious persecution in 1884 (year 2427 of the Buddhist Era), political in origin, which is said to have driven the priest to move his flock.

The sources consulted do not set out the authorities' exact grievances. The regional context nonetheless makes a political reading plausible. France and Siam were increasingly vying for influence on both banks of the Mekong, a rivalry that would culminate in the crisis of 1893. A community led by French priests and partly outside local hierarchies could well have caused unease. This contextualisation remains an interpretation, not a fact established by the documents.

The crossing and the first encampment

So the group crossed the lake, on a small boat and bamboo rafts according to America. It settled on the northern shore, which was then wooded.

The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, a Thai public institution, reports the testimony of Father Georges Dabin, sent there by Prodhomme. He found only two or three houses and a shelter serving as a church. Around 150 people were sleeping under grass-thatched shelters. The group comprised ten families of Vietnamese catechumens and ten families of Isan catechumens of Lao origin. America gives the same order of magnitude: some twenty families, or about 150 people.

What tradition tells

Alongside this documented account, the community hands down its own from generation to generation, reported notably by the AsiaNews agency. In November 1884, thirty-five Vietnamese and Lao families, led by Guégo, arrived at the lakeside. They placed themselves under the protection of Saint Michael, boarded makeshift boats and let the wind carry them to the shore of present-day Tha Rae.

This story is not false by nature. It says something different from the archives: it gives the event meaning. The patronage of the archangel, the trust placed in the wind and the higher number of families turn the crossing into a founding act, almost an exodus. The figure of thirty-five families does, however, contradict the twenty families described by the witness closest to events. And in the sources consulted, the precise dating to November rests on this tradition alone.

The memory of the crossing has been set in stone. Built in 1968, St Michael's Cathedral takes the form of a boat in remembrance of the passage across the lake. The bamboo raft, for its part, remains a symbol of the village's identity.

1884 or 1885?

The founding date itself is not entirely settled. Thai sources, both institutional and academic, and most media give 1884. Yet the biography of Combourieu published by the Institut de Recherche France-Asie (IRFA), which holds the MEP archives, refers to the founding ‘of the village of Tharé in 1885’.

His obituary states only that the community ‘had just emigrated’ when he arrived. We also know that he was in sole charge at Sakon in October 1885. It is tempting to distinguish the families' settlement, at the end of 1884, from the organisation of the parish, in 1885, but none of the sources consulted says so explicitly. Prudence dictates writing that the village was founded in 1884 or 1885, and noting that 1884 is the date accepted locally.

A mixed founding community, Vietnamese and Lao

Correcting the image of a ‘Vietnamese’ village

Tourist literature often presents Tha Rae as a village of Vietnamese Catholics. The testimony reported by the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre reveals a more complex reality. The founding group was mixed, divided equally between Yuan families and Lao-Isan families. Yuan (ญวน) is the traditional Thai term for the Vietnamese.

This dual origin matters for understanding how the faith took root. The community was not a foreign enclave dropped onto Isan. From the outset, it brought migrants together with people of the region who shared the Lao language and culture of their Buddhist neighbours. The South China Morning Post today describes the inhabitants as descendants of Vietnamese, Chinese and Lao.

Where did the first Vietnamese families come from?

This is the main gap in the current state of our sources. None of the documents consulted specifies which region of Vietnam these families came from, nor when or why they had migrated before 1884. A Ministry of Culture entry mentions only ‘Christians who came from Vietnam’ already present in Sakon Nakhon.

The same entry states that the inhabitants supposedly came from Laos during the reign of Rama III, also known as Nangklao. That reign ended several decades before 1884, so the claim cannot describe the founding of the village, which dates from the reign of Rama V. It may refer to earlier migrations of the region's Lao population, but the text does not say so. It should not be repeated as it stands.

The later waves

The village's Vietnamese component grew stronger in the twentieth century. Between 1939 and 1941, new Vietnamese arrivals settled in a quarter called Khum Ban Mai, literally ‘new village quarter’. The community calls them Yuan op-phayop, the ‘refugee Vietnamese’. Those who arrived during the Second World War are called Yuan mai, the ‘new Vietnamese’.

These names draw a clear line between the founding families and the newcomers. They are a reminder that Tha Rae's identity did not freeze in 1884: it absorbed several generations of migrants.

Taking root: a priest, a school, trials

The long presence of Joseph Combourieu

Tha Rae's first parish priest, Joseph Combourieu, opened a parish school a few years after his arrival. He died at Tha Rae on 4 August 1939, aged nearly 80, after more than half a century in the region. These two facts probably weigh more heavily in the community's taking root than the episode of the crossing.

Guégo, by contrast, did not stay long. In 1887 he left to settle at Don Done, in Laos. He died on 29 March 1918 at Nong Saeng (or Nong Seng), where he is buried near Prodhomme. The name of the archdiocese, Tha Rae–Nong Saeng, thus links the village founded by the community with the place where the mission's two pioneers lie.

The ecclesiastical structure took shape in parallel. According to a source yet to be confirmed, Pope Leo XIII erected the Vicariate Apostolic of Laos in 1889, separated from Eastern Siam. The mission in the North-East thereby gained a framework of its own.

A closely watched freedom

Taking root did not come without constraints. Father Prayoon Phongpit, quoted by America, recounts that the faithful's movements were controlled: permission was needed to leave the province. The testimony does not specify the exact period concerned.

The gravest trial came during the Franco-Thai War of 1940–1941. According to the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, Christians of Vietnamese origin in the provinces of Sakon Nakhon, Nakhon Phanom, Nong Khai and Udon were suspected of supporting France. Churches were closed, property confiscated and worship banned.

The episode throws the situation of these communities into particularly sharp relief. In the eyes of the authorities, their faith tied them to a rival colonial power, and their partly Vietnamese origins compounded the suspicion. Coming through this period without disappearing is probably one of the strongest proofs of how firmly the community was anchored.

Institutions built to last

After the war, consolidation became institutional. The diocese was erected on 18 December 1965, with Tha Rae as its seat. Three years later, in 1968, St Michael's Cathedral was built.

The school remained at the heart of the arrangement, as in Combourieu's day. The Catholic Education Council of Thailand today lists St Joseph's School in Tha Rae, run by the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres. It also mentions the local congregation of the Lovers of the Holy Cross of Tha Rae, which runs several schools. A religious congregation bearing the village's name shows that the Church in Tha Rae no longer depends solely on missionaries from elsewhere: it produces its own leaders.

Living heritage and reputation: the ‘largest Catholic community’?

A built landscape and shared rites

The village retains its grid plan and an architecture that blends French colonial, Vietnamese and Chinese styles. Here too stand the houses of wealthy merchants known as nai hoi, whom local tradition links to the Vietnamese.

Catholicism is also lived out in public space. Every year, a three-day Christmas procession has earned Tha Rae the nickname ‘land of stars’. Missionary memory is kept alive: in 2020, statues of Prodhomme and Guégo were unveiled in Nakhon Phanom, in the presence of some 2,500 faithful according to UCA News.

A phrase to be handled with care

That leaves the phrase repeated everywhere. One Thai Catholic website speaks of the village ‘with the largest number of Catholics in the country’. The Thai magazine Sarakadee Lite and the South China Morning Post echo the idea, while AsiaNews refers to ‘the largest baptised community’. The priest quoted by America is more measured: he speaks of the highest concentration of Catholics in Sakon Nakhon province.

The figures put forward do not measure the same thing:

• the South China Morning Post (2021) speaks of around 15,000 Catholics, out of some 380,000 estimated nationwide;
• AsiaNews cites 14,000 inhabitants, 95 per cent of them Christian, without the date of these figures being known.

No official comparative statistics consulted, whether from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Thailand or the census, set Tha Rae against the country's other Catholic centres. The phrase reflects a widely shared reputation, not a proven fact. It can rigorously be written that Tha Rae is often presented as the largest Catholic village community in Thailand, and that it is certainly one of the most densely Catholic.

What held the community together

The rooting of Catholicism in Tha Rae does not rest on a founding miracle, even if the tradition of the crossing offers that image. It results from a combination of factors:

• a core of converts bound to the mission by their liberation;
• a move that took them away from local powers and gathered them on a territory of their own;
• a mixed group, at once migrant and regional;
• the long presence of a single parish priest and a school opened early;
• the ordeal of 1941 overcome, followed by local institutions built up over time.

The boat-shaped cathedral sums up this twofold legacy. It celebrates a founding story, yet it was built eighty years later by a community that had had time to become fully part of Isan.

Sources and further reading

1. IRFA (notice biographique et nécrologie), 1428 - GUÉGO François, Institut de recherche France-Asie / Missions étrangères de Paris, s.d..
2. IRFA, The MEP in Laos: an overview (1662-1975), Institut de recherche France-Asie, s.d..
3. IRFA (notice biographique et nécrologie), 1628 - COMBOURIEU Joseph, Institut de recherche France-Asie / Missions étrangères de Paris, s.d..
4. IRFA, 1193 - PRODHOMME Constant, Institut de recherche France-Asie / Missions étrangères de Paris, s.d..
5. ท่าแร่ (Tha Rae) - Wiki Community, Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC), s.d..
6. Thailand's largest Catholic community marks Christmas with three-day procession in Tha Rae, known as 'Land of Stars', South China Morning Post, 2021.
7. Thailand cave rescue draws attention to its thriving Catholic population, America Magazine, 2018.
8. Kerkkrit Chokchairatchada, อัตลักษณ์ของชุมชนท่าแร่ ตำบลท่าแร่ อำเภอเมือง จังหวัดสกลนคร (L'identité de la communauté de Tha Rae), mémoire, Université Mahasarakham, 2023.
9. สังฆมณฑลท่าแร่ หนองแสง อาสนวิหารอัครเทวดามีคาแอล, catholichaab.com (site catholique thaïlandais), s.d..
10. อัครสังฆมณฑลท่าแร่-หนองแสง, Base de données culturelle du ministère thaïlandais de la Culture (m-culture.in.th), s.d..
11. ประวัติบ้านท่าแร่, Base de données culturelle du ministère thaïlandais de la Culture (m-culture.in.th), s.d..
12. เขตมิสซังท่าแร่-หนองแสง, Wikipédia en thaï, s.d..
13. Homage to French missionaries who brought faith to Laos, Thailand, UCA News, 2020.
14. Sakon Nakhon's Star Festival shines light on Christians, AsiaNews, s.d..
15. แกะรอยประวัติศาสตร์จากภาพยนตร์ ท่าแร่ ชุมชนคาทอลิกใหญ่สุดในไทย เก่าแก่กว่า 141 ปี, Sarakadee Lite, 2025.
16. โรงเรียนสังกัดอัครสังฆมณฑลท่าแร่-หนองแสง, Conseil de l'éducation catholique de Thaïlande, s.d..