Jangcheon Catholic Church

History & origins

The Catholic community of Jangcheon reaches back far earlier than the establishment of the present parish, to its years as a mission station. In 1964, the Catholic Times reported that a 40-pyeong mission chapel had been completed on the hill overlooking Jangcheon, on the site of a former Japanese shrine, and that it was blessed on December 31. At the time, the community belonged to Chilgok Parish, had only about ten Catholics, and received construction support from the Benedictine community at Waegwan. The report is an important witness to the small mission community that formed one of the starting points of Catholic life in Jangcheon.

Pastoral jurisdiction changed over the decades, and immediately before its elevation Jangcheon was a mission station of Haepyeong Parish. Both the official directory of the Archdiocese of Daegu and the Catholic Times record that the mission station was elevated to parish status on August 27, 2010. A community that had been under Chilgok Parish in the 1960s thus passed through changes in pastoral boundaries before becoming an independent parish.

Construction of a new parish church began in earnest with the groundbreaking on July 21, 2013. A two-story church with a total floor area of about 1,191 square meters was built, and Archbishop Thaddeus Cho Hwan-kil presided over its dedication on July 27, 2014. Contemporary reporting noted that the community numbered only about eighty Catholics and that they had joined their efforts to build the new church.

Jangcheon's history can therefore be read as more than half a century of growth from a very small mission station to an independent parish with its own new church. Although the supervising parish changed over time, the continuity of a local Catholic community that preserved its life of faith and eventually built a parish church of its own is the clearest historical feature of Jangcheon.