 Pope Francis named him as Venerable on 4 May 2017, a significant step on the road towards canonization.Thuận was born in Huế in 1928, the son of Nguyễn Văn Ấm and Elizabeth Ngô Đình Thị Hiệp, daughter of Ngô Đình Khả.He joined the seminary at An Ninh as a teenager, and was ordained a priest on 11 June 1953, by Monsignor Jean-Baptiste Urrutia.