신동 성당

History & origins

The roots of Sindong Parish reach back to older Catholic communities in Chilgok associated with the Sinnamugol and Utjeom mission stations. According to the Korean Catholic Encyclopedia and the Digital Chilgok Cultural Encyclopedia, Catholics had formed a community at Utjeom from the later nineteenth century, while Sinnamugol became one of the important early centers of Catholic life in the Daegu region. These two streams of faith later formed part of the background from which the Sindong mission community developed.

In the 1930s, Utjeom mission station came under Waegwan Parish. After the Korean War, Benedictine monks who had settled in Waegwan became deeply involved in ministry in the area. Land at the present church site was acquired in January 1959, and a mission chapel at Sindong was completed and blessed on December 6 of that year. Regular Masses celebrated by Benedictine priests then helped prepare the community for the establishment of an independent parish.

Sindong mission station was separated from Waegwan Parish and elevated to a parish on February 1, 1968, with Father Lee Gyeong-u as its first pastor. The new parish broadened its work beyond liturgy and catechesis. In 1970 it opened Sangnok Academy for young people who had difficulty receiving regular middle-school education, and it also undertook pastoral care of the Yeonho settlement for people affected by Hansen’s disease.

In later years the parish continued both to care for its mission communities and to preserve and communicate the historical Catholic heritage of Sinnamugol. The development of Sindong shows how old Catholic villages and mission stations, Benedictine ministry, and the creation of an independent parish became one continuous strand in the Catholic history of Chilgok. In this process, Sindong did more than simply become a new parish administratively: it gathered the traditions of long-dispersed mission communities into a permanent pastoral structure and broadened its character to include educational and social apostolates.