Yongseong Catholic Church

History & origins

Yongseong Parish was established on November 10, 1995. At the time, the Archdiocese of Daegu was reorganizing pastoral territories in Gyeongsan and surrounding rural areas and establishing new parishes; Yongseong became an independent parish within that process. When the parish was created, Guryeong Mission Station, previously under Jain Parish, was transferred to Yongseong's care.

The history of faith that Guryeong brought into Yongseong is much older than the parish itself. According to the Archdiocese of Daegu, Father Robert's 1887 pastoral report recorded sixty Catholics at the mission station. In 1921, Bishop Florian Demange, the first ordinary of the diocese, designated the Basilica of Saint Mary Major as its patronal title, blessed Guryeong as a quasi-parish, and celebrated Mass there. Over time, the mission passed successively under Yongpyeong, Hayang, Geumho, and Jain parishes.

After Guryeong was placed under Yongseong in 1995, the preservation of this older mission also became part of the parish's story. In November 1997, Archbishop Paul Ri Moun-hi celebrated a Mass marking the renovation of Guryeong Mission Station. Efforts to preserve and present its Catholic heritage continued, and Yongseong came to carry responsibility both as a newly established local parish and as the caretaker of a much older mountain Catholic community.

For that reason, the history of Yongseong Church is not exhausted by the parish's foundation in 1995. Its defining historical feature is that the establishment of a new parish brought a documented nineteenth-century Catholic community into the present pastoral structure. The formation of a modern parish and the preservation of an old Catholic village tradition meet here in a single historical line.