Baengnyeongdo Church

History & origins

The Catholic history of Baengnyeongdo is closely connected with the maritime contacts of the early Church in Korea. The Catholic Encyclopedia records that in 1846, Father Andrew Kim Taegon, acting under Bishop Ferréol's direction to seek a sea route for missionaries, made contact with a Chinese fishing vessel near Baengnyeongdo and entrusted letters and a map to it. Before Korea's liberation, the island area belonged to Jangyeon Parish in the Hwanghae apostolic territory.

A more stable local Catholic community began to take shape in the 1940s. The encyclopedia states that evangelization began in 1944 when Catherine Kim Yang-gyeom, who had worked as a kindergarten teacher at Jangyeon Parish, settled on Baengnyeongdo and taught catechism to children. After liberation, priests began visiting the island to celebrate Mass, and in 1947 Catholic families arriving from the Jangyeon area helped form a more definite mission-station community.

Around the Korean War, refugees from the Hwanghae region increased the Catholic population. Jurisdiction over the mission station shifted several times among parishes such as Bupyeong, Ganghwa, and Dapdong, and the island geography made a stable pastoral structure especially important. Father Edward Moffett of Maryknoll worked toward the erection of a parish, and on 9 May 1959 the Baengnyeong mission station was elevated to parish status.

As the first pastor, Father Moffett prepared a church and rectory and established numerous mission stations on Baengnyeongdo and neighboring islands, strengthening the foundations of island ministry. The present parish therefore stands at the end of a long process shaped by maritime mission contacts, local evangelization before and after liberation, and the faith of communities formed through war and displacement.