Jeonpo Catholic Church

History & origins

Jeonpo Parish was established on November 25, 1972, after being separated from Seomyeon Parish. At the time, Catholics living in the Jeonpo-dong area experienced difficulty traveling to Beomil, Yangjeong, or Seomyeon parishes because of Hwangnyeongsan Mountain and the urban transportation conditions, creating a need for a parish closer to their daily living area. The creation of the new parish gave local Catholics an independent liturgical and pastoral community amid the urban growth of the Jeonpo and Seomyeon area.

Construction of a parish church followed, and a new church was completed and dedicated in 1974. Jeonpo was then developing rapidly as a commercial area around Seomyeon Intersection, and the Catholic Times’ fiftieth-anniversary retrospective reports that the parish grew actively around Catholics working and living in that commercial district. From 1983 to 1987, Fr. Son Sam-seok served as the seventh pastor; later, as Bishop of Busan, he returned to preside at the fiftieth-anniversary Mass, linking his earlier pastoral period with the community’s later history.

From the 2000s onward, downtown depopulation around Seomyeon and the reduction of residential areas slowed growth in parish membership and brought more visible aging of the community. The parish responded with programs including a senior college, St. Joseph Fathers’ School, and parish groups adapted to the changing local population. This process shows that continuity in parish history involves more than remaining in the same place; the forms of pastoral activity also changed as the urban environment and composition of parishioners changed.

In November 2022, a Mass was celebrated for the fiftieth anniversary of the parish’s establishment. Recognition was also given for Bible reading, the offering of the Rosary, and Catholics who had maintained parish registration for fifty years or more, making the memory of a half-century visible within the community. Jeonpo Parish’s history can therefore be summarized as a community founded during the urban expansion of the 1970s that continued through later changes in the city center and the aging of its Catholic population.