Wolbae Catholic Church

History & origins

The Catholic community in Wolbae began as a mission station in 1949, before it became a parish. Catholics in the Wolbae area had difficulty traveling the long distance to Hwawon Parish, so Father Seo Jeong-do Bernard of Hwawon established a mission in the home of a local Catholic in Wolseong-dong. As the number of faithful grew, the need for a dedicated church and an independent parish became stronger.

Father Park Jae-su John began planning a new church in 1955 and purchased land in September 1957. In October of that year, construction of the church and rectory began as the Wolbae community was elevated to parish status. The Korean Catholic Encyclopedia and the present archdiocesan directory differ on the precise day used for the foundation date, but both support the main sequence: in the autumn of 1957 the mission became a parish and construction of the church began. The church and rectory were completed in July 1959, and Bishop John Baptist Sye Bong-kil presided at the dedication on May 13, 1962.

As southwestern Daegu urbanized, the parish's territory was divided several times. Songhyeon Parish was separated in 1982 and Sangin Parish in 1991, and later new parishes such as Daegok further subdivided the broad area once served by Wolbae. In 1976, a community of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was established to assist in parish apostolates.

In 2007, while preparing a Mass of thanksgiving for its fiftieth anniversary, the parish officially recalled the way communities such as Sangin, Daegok, Wolseong, and Saint Joseph had been established from its territory. The central line of Wolbae's history is therefore the growth of a small 1949 mission into a parish with its own church, followed by its role in giving rise to new parishes as the local Church became more closely organized.