Daebu Catholic Church

History & origins

The Catholic community of Daebudo was served as a mission station before the present parish was established. The history of Songnim-dong Parish in the Korean Catholic Encyclopedia records that the Daebudo mission station was transferred into the pastoral care of Songnim-dong Parish on April 15, 1971. This shows that by the early 1970s a Catholic community on Daebudo was already being maintained within the mission-station system away from a parish church.

The community later developed into an independent parish. According to the Guide to the Catholic Church in Korea, Daebu Parish was established on October 15, 1992. The transition from mission station to parish was an important change, giving Catholics on the island a parish-level structure for resident pastoral care, liturgy, and formation. Public sources do not provide a complete sequence of every jurisdictional change between 1971 and 1992, so unverified intermediate stages are not supplied here.

The parish territory was adjusted again in December 2005. When the Diocese of Incheon created Yeongheung Parish, all of Yeongheung-myeon and Pungdo-dong of Ansan were separated from Daebu Parish. Daebu was thereby refocused on the Catholic community of Daebudo. The successive stages of mission station, parish establishment in 1992, and territorial division in 2005 show how pastoral structures in the island region were reorganized as Catholic populations, transportation, and local living patterns changed.