[2] Quảng Đức was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government of Ngô Đình Diệm, a staunch Roman Catholic.

Quảng Đức's act increased international pressure on Diệm and led him to announce reforms with the intention of mollifying the Buddhists.

As protests continued, the ARVN Special Forces loyal to Diệm's brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, launched raids across South Vietnam on Buddhist pagodas, seizing Quảng Đức's heart and causing deaths and widespread damage.

At the age of seven, he left to study Buddhism under Hòa thượng[a] Thích Hoằng Thâm, who was his maternal uncle and spiritual master.

The last of the 31 new temples that he was responsible for constructing was the Quan The Am pagoda in the Phú Nhuận District of Gia Định Province on the outskirts of Saigon.

After the temple-building phase, Quảng Đức was appointed to serve as the Chairman of the Panel on Ceremonial Rites of the Congregation of Vietnamese Monks, and as abbot of the Phuoc Hoa pagoda, which was the initial location of the Association for Buddhist Studies of Vietnam (ABSV).

[14] Some Catholic priests ran their own private armies;[15] there were forced conversions, looting, shelling, and demolition of pagodas in some areas, to which the government turned a blind eye.

[16] Some Buddhist villages converted en masse to receive aid or avoid being forcibly resettled by Diệm's regime.

[17] The "private" status that was imposed on Buddhism by the French, which required official permission to be obtained by those wishing to conduct public Buddhist activities, was not repealed by Diệm.

[20] The white and gold Vatican flag was regularly flown at all major public events in South Vietnam,[21] and Diệm dedicated his country to the Virgin Mary in 1959.

Just days before, Catholics had been encouraged to fly the Vatican flag at a celebration for Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục of Huế, Diệm's elder brother.

[24] Most of the reporters disregarded the message, since the Buddhist crisis had at that point been going on for more than a month, and the next day only a few journalists turned up, including David Halberstam of The New York Times and Malcolm Browne, the Saigon bureau chief for the Associated Press (AP).

Quảng Đức rotated a string of wooden prayer beads and recited the words Nam mô A Di Đà Phật ("Homage to Amitābha Buddha") before striking a match and dropping it on himself.

Quảng Đức's last words before his self-immolation were documented in a letter he had left: "Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngô Đình Diệm to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally.

I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organize in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.

I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think ... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

Once the fire subsided, a group of monks covered the smoking corpse with yellow robes, picked it up and tried to fit it into a coffin, but the limbs could not be straightened and one of the arms protruded from the wooden box as he was carried to the nearby Xá Lợi Pagoda in central Saigon.

The police encircled the pagoda, blocking public passage and giving observers the impression that an armed siege was imminent by donning riot gear.

On 19 June, his remains were carried out of Xá Lợi to a cemetery 16 kilometers (9.9 miles) south of the city for a re-cremation and funeral ceremony.

The secret police intended to confiscate Quảng Đức's ashes, but two monks had escaped with the urn, jumping over the back fence and finding safety at the US Operations Mission next door.

Trueheart and embassy official Charles Flowerree felt that the location was selected to show solidarity with the Cambodian government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

South Vietnam and Cambodia had strained relations: in a speech on 22 May, Sihanouk had accused Diệm of mistreating Vietnamese and ethnic minority Khmer Buddhists.

Thirty high-ranking officers headed by General Lê Văn Tỵ declared their resolve to carry out all missions entrusted to the army for the defense of the constitution and the Republic.

[38] Photographs taken by Malcolm Browne of the self-immolation quickly spread across the wire services and were featured on the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

[40] Ellen Hammer described the event as having "evoked dark images of persecution and horror corresponding to a profoundly Asian reality that passed the understanding of Westerners.

"[41] John Mecklin, an official from the US embassy, noted that the photograph "had a shock effect of incalculable value to the Buddhist cause, becoming a symbol of the state of things in Vietnam.

"[39] William Colby, then chief of the CIA's Far East Division, opined that Diệm "handled the Buddhist crisis fairly badly and allowed it to grow.

Ray Herndon, the United Press International (UPI) correspondent who had forgotten to take his camera on the day, was harshly criticized in private by his employer.

The practice had also been seen in the Chinese city of Harbin in 1948 when a monk sat down in the lotus position on a pile of sawdust and soybean oil and set fire to himself in protest against the treatment of Buddhism by the anti-religious communists of Mao Zedong.

[49] Later that same year, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker pacifist, poured kerosene over himself and set light to himself below the third-floor window of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon on 2 November 1965.