Rev. Vincent D. Bui, 58, died last month after contracting COVID-19, Detroit's Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament announced on Facebook.

Bui, a priest of the Diocese of Lansing, died on June 9. He had been ordained for 25 years and spent two years as an associate paster at St. Robert Bellarmine in Flushing until 1997, the post stated. Beginning in 2000, he was a definite member of the Society of St. Sulpice.

Bui was born in North Vietnam on June 25, 1961, the sixth of eight children. Of his siblings, one of his brothers is also a priest and one of his sisters is a Dominican sister.

Rev. Vincent D. Bui succumbed to the coronavirus on June 9. | Facebook

Bui graduated high school in 1979 and was captured in his first 13 attempts to leave Vietnam. On the 14th attempt, due to his brother's help, he was successful in escaping on Easter Sunday 1981. He spent eight months in refugee camps in Thailand and Bangkok before eventually making his way to the United States in 1982.

Bui spent some time in Iowa, where he studied English at the Divine Word College, before moving to various cities in Illinois and working as a bilingual social worker with refugees. He also held various positions within the church.

Bui joined the Resettlement Program of the Catholic Social Service of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, in 1989. He began his theological studies and formation at St. Mary's Seminary & University in Baltimore in 1990 after applying to the Diocese of Lansing for official ministry, the Facebook post noted.

After he was ordained in 1995 and spent his two years as an associate pastor at St. Robert Bellarmine, Bui went on to the Society of St. Sulpice, where he put in candidacy for the Emmaus Spirituality Centre in Zambia. It was during this time in Africa that he contracted malaria. 

Bui also spent a year at the Catholic University of America, where he completed the licentiate degree in Canon Law in 2001 and was assigned to the faculty of St. Patrick's Seminary in California. He stayed for five years before leaving to study Canon Law at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada, but he did not finish the degree and returned to St. Patrick's Seminary in 2009, where he remained until 2017.

Bui was hospitalized on May 13 at San Jose Regional Medical Center, where he remained in ICU for nearly a month before passing.