Hwadong Mission Station

History & origins

The origins of Hwadong Mission Station are tied to the reorganization of pastoral care in the Sangju area in the late 1950s. According to the Diocese of Andong's mission-station material, Sangju Parish then covered too wide an area to care easily for all local Catholics. In 1959 Father Eligius Gyeong Do-beom established a temporary church in Hwaseo-myeon. That community became Hwaryeong Parish when it separated from Sangju Parish in 1962, and mission stations including Hwadong came under the new parish. This change also created the pastoral foundation for the Catholic community in Hwadong to develop its own mission-station space.

Around the same time, a thatched house was purchased in Bangok-ri, Hwadong-myeon, and used as Bangok Mission Station, which diocesan material describes as the predecessor of today's Hwadong Mission Station. Because it was far from the village center and difficult to reach, the community looked for a more suitable location. In 1964 land was secured at the site where the mission station now stands, making construction of a new building possible.

The new building reached its ridge-beam ceremony on October 29, 1965, and was blessed on December 8 of the same year. Father Alwin Schmitz of Waegwan Abbey took part in the design, and diocesan material notes that murals painted in 1967 by Father André Bouton remain behind and beside the sanctuary. These records show how religious, clergy, and local Catholics worked together to create a permanent place for liturgy.

Industrialization and rural depopulation later changed the size of the community, but the mission station continued as a place of prayer and liturgy for local Catholics. Its history developed through the separation of a new parish, the expansion of rural pastoral care, and the blessing of a space built for the community, leaving a continuing link between Hwaryeong Parish and Catholics in Hwadong-myeon.