Taehwa-dong Catholic Church

About this place

Taehwa-dong Catholic Church is a parish in the Andong District of the Diocese of Andong, serving the Catholic community in and around Taehwa-dong in Andong. The diocesan parish guide identifies its patron as the Queen of Martyrs. As one of the parishes located within the city of Andong, it provides the ordinary setting in which local Catholics participate in Mass, receive the sacraments, and continue their communal life of faith within an urban living area. Because the current diocesan parish page lists Taehwa-dong as a distinct parish and identifies its patron, the church functions as an established pastoral unit for the sacramental, catechetical, and communal life of Catholics in Andong’s urban area.

The pastoral responsibilities of Taehwa-dong Catholic Church also include correctional ministry. The Diocese of Andong explicitly links pastoral care at Andong Prison with Taehwa-dong Parish. This means that the parish’s ministry extends beyond liturgy and community activities inside the church building to include people in a correctional facility who cannot ordinarily participate in parish life. Taehwa-dong Catholic Church can therefore be understood both as a local urban parish and as a community that shares responsibility for one of the diocese’s specialized pastoral ministries. The fact that its link with Andong Prison is explicitly included in the diocese’s official correctional-ministry structure shows that this ministry is a continuing part of parish pastoral care rather than an occasional event. The combination of ordinary urban parish ministry with specialized ministry to a correctional facility is an important characteristic of Taehwa-dong Parish today.