흥해성당

History & origins

The Catholic history of the Heunghae area began with mission stations before the parish itself was established. According to a homily by the Archbishop of Daegu, Cheongha mission station was formed in 1955, Chogok mission station in 1964, and Heunghae mission station in 1981. These small communities provided the foundation for Catholic life in northern Pohang.

The growing Heunghae mission community was established as an independent parish on August 26, 1994. Diocesan records also confirm that 2019 was celebrated as the parish's 25th anniversary. By then, Heunghae had become an established parish community serving northern Pohang.

Later, urban development created a need to relocate the church, and the community also endured the major Pohang earthquake of 2017. Construction of a new church continued, and on September 28, 2019, Archbishop Thaddeus Cho Hwan-kil dedicated the new church and blessed its Marian grotto. The new complex was designed to express the parish's devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes.

Heunghae's history thus moves from the formation of mission communities to parish establishment, and then through relocation and rebuilding amid urban development and earthquake. The dedication of the new church in 2019 was a major turning point in which the community secured a new home despite disaster and environmental change. The new church completed in 2019 included a Marian grotto modeled on the Lourdes grotto at the Archdiocese of Daegu's Seongmodang. This meant that the relocation was more than a change of building: devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, the parish patron, was deliberately embodied in the design of the new church. The move and rebuilding therefore also carried the community's spiritual continuity into a new place.