Cheongsong Church

History & origins

The roots of Catholic faith in the Cheongsong area go back much further than the establishment of the parish. According to a Catholic Times account marking the parish’s fiftieth anniversary, Catholics fleeing from Chungcheong and Jeolla during the Sinyu Persecution around 1801 formed Catholic villages in the Cheongsong area. The historical archive of the Diocese of Andong also records that many Catholics in Cheongsong, Jinbo, and Yeongyang were arrested during the persecution of 1815. After those early communities were scattered by persecution, the modern parish community had to be formed anew. The diocesan record states that more than 130 Catholics were arrested in the Cheongsong, Jinbo, and Yeongyang areas during this persecution, and that some of those seized in Cheongsong died in prison. The persecution created a long rupture before a visible Catholic community again emerged in the area.

In 1959, several Catholics in the Cheongsong-eup area began gathering for Gongso liturgies, giving the local faith community a more definite form once again. As the number of Catholics increased, Cheongsong Parish was established on February 13, 1965, and the diocesan historical archive records Father Yeo Dong-chan as its first pastor. The church building was completed in 1966, providing the independent parish community with a stable base for liturgy and pastoral ministry. The completion of the church building in 1966 marked the point at which a community that had gathered chiefly for gongso liturgies gained a stable physical base for the sacraments, catechesis, and communal life of a formal parish.

The parish’s role later expanded within the wider local community. The Catholic Times reports that Cheongsong Parish devoted itself to prison ministry from the 1980s onward, and the Diocese of Andong today identifies Gyeongbuk Northern Prison No. 3 as a correctional pastoral field linked to Cheongsong Catholic Church. The history of the parish can therefore be understood as a continuous local Church story: from the memory of Catholic villages during persecution, through the twentieth-century mission community, parish establishment, and church construction, to its continuing ministry in correctional institutions. The record published for the parish’s fiftieth anniversary in 2015 likewise looks back on both the memory of the early Catholic villages and the later correctional ministry as important strands in the history of Cheongsong Parish.