Mawon Shrine

History & origins

The origins of the Catholic community in Mawon reach back to the period after the Sinyu Persecution of 1801. According to sources from the Diocese of Andong and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, Catholics from the Chungcheong region fled persecution into the rugged mountains of northern Yeongnam and formed Catholic villages around Mungyeong, Hansil, Yeoumok, and other places. Mawon also became part of this landscape of faith. For Catholics who survived by slash-and-burn farming in the mountains, these villages were both places of livelihood and communities in which the faith could be preserved.

When the Byeongin Persecution spread to the Mungyeong area in 1866, Catholics in Mawon and the surrounding villages also suffered arrest and punishment. Matthias Park Sang-geun, a local government clerk in Mungyeong, met Fr. Nicolas Calais of the Paris Foreign Missions Society at Hansil and helped him take refuge. After parting from the priest, Park was arrested and taken to Sangju. According to his biography published by the bishops’ conference, he continued to profess his faith under interrogation and punishment and was executed by hanging in Sangju in January 1867 at the age of thirty. His family recovered his body and buried him in his home area.

Park’s grave remained for a long time in the family burial ground, was identified again in early 1983, and in September 1985 was moved to the present shrine site. Later, a parking area and access road were prepared, and statues commemorating Park and Fr. Calais, a statue of the Risen Christ, the Stations of the Cross, and a statue of the Blessed Virgin were added as the site was developed for the veneration of the martyr. This process shows how a personal grave developed into a shrine preserving the martyr memory of the local Church.

On August 16, 2014, Pope Francis beatified Paul Yun Ji-chung and 123 companion martyrs in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, and Matthias Park Sang-geun was among those raised to the rank of Blessed. The beatification more clearly connected the local martyr memory preserved at Mawon with the wider martyr tradition of the Catholic Church in Korea.