Ngo Dinh Diem - Family and Childhood

Family and Childhood

Diệm was born in Huế, the capital of the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty. His family originated in the central Vietnamese village of Phú Cẩm. Portuguese missionaries had converted his family to Roman Catholicism in the 17th century, so Diệm was given a saint's name at birth, following the custom of the Catholic Church. His full name was Jean Baptiste Ngô Đình Diệm. He would often claim that he had descended from a blue-blooded family of mandarins who were so revered that people believed that it was a great honour and good luck to be buried alongside his ancestors. Most historians dismiss this as false and believe the family was of low rank until his father passed the imperial examinations.

His father, Ngô Đình Khả, scrapped plans to become a Roman Catholic priest and became a mandarin and counselor to Emperor Thành Thái during the French colonisation. He rose to become the minister of the rites and chamberlain, and keeper of the eunuchs. Khả had six sons and three daughters by his second wife, whom he married after his first died childless. Devoutly Roman Catholic, Khả took his entire family to Mass every morning. The third of six sons, Diệm was christened Jean-Baptiste in the cathedral in Huế. In 1907, the French deposed the emperor on the pretext of insanity, because of his complaints about the colonisation. Khả retired in protest and became a farmer. Diệm laboured in the family's rice fields while studying at a French Catholic school, and later entered a private school started by his father. At age fifteen he followed his elder brother, Ngô Đình Thục, later to become Vietnam's highest ranking Catholic bishop, into a monastery. After a few months he left, finding monastic life too rigorous.

At the end of his secondary schooling, his examination results at the French lycée in Huế saw him offered a scholarship to Paris but declined to contemplate becoming a priest. He dropped the idea, believing it to be too rigorous. He moved to Hanoi to study at the School of Public Administration and Law, a French school that trained Vietnamese bureaucrats. It was there that he had the only romantic relationship of his life when he fell in love with one of his teacher's daughters. After she persisted with her vocation, entering a convent, he remained celibate.