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About this place
The official name of Gyodong Church is Gyodong Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, a parish in the Yeongbuk District of the Diocese of Chuncheon serving the Sokcho area. Its patron is Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and the present church is the central place of liturgy and communal Catholic life for the parish community centered on Gyodong.
To understand Gyodong Parish, it is helpful to look beyond today’s administrative boundaries and consider the longer development of Catholic life in the Sokcho area. The parish was separated from the existing Sokcho Parish to serve a growing postwar urban Catholic population, while the deeper roots of local Catholic history reach back to a village of believers formed by Catholics who had fled persecution.
History & origins
The older roots of Catholic life in the Sokcho area are connected with the Ssari-jae Catholic village, formed by believers who had taken refuge there during the Byeongin Persecution. In 1921 Fr. Choi Mun-sik arrived and Ssari-jae became a parish, but after he later moved the parish to Seomun-ri in Yangyang, the Ssari-jae community reverted to mission-station status.
After the Korean War, the Catholic population of the Sokcho area increased, and during the 1960s the commercial and residential center of life shifted toward Jungang-dong. The existing Sokcho Parish could no longer easily accommodate the growing number of parishioners. Against this background, Gyodong Parish was established on December 30, 1966, after being separated from Sokcho Parish, today’s Dongmyeong-dong Parish.
Retired Bishop Thomas Quinlan played a major role in the construction of the church. According to the diocesan history, he stayed at the construction site and guided the work, and the church was designed according to his wishes in the form of a dove spreading its wings and flying peacefully toward the East Sea. The resulting parish came to connect the rapidly growing postwar urban Catholic community of Sokcho with the deeper history of faith in the Yeongbuk region.
Korean Catholic Places Encyclopedia
Gyo-dong Catholic Church: history and architecture
Read about the place's history, architecture, people, and events in the Korean Catholic Places Encyclopedia.
Encyclopedia articles are currently available in Korean.
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- Data freshness
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- Last updated
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- Francisco Diary
Diocese
Chuncheon Diocese (Diocese of Chuncheon)
Official website: http://www.cccatholic.or.kr
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