Ganghwa Catholic Church

History & origins

Catholic life on Ganghwa began long before the establishment of the parish. The Catholic Encyclopedia of Korea records a Catholic who settled on Ganghwa around 1871 and describes how the faith continued through families and villages. Bugun-ri Mission Station was established in 1925, and during the 1930s mission communities also appeared in places such as Onsu-ri and Daesan-ri, creating small Catholic communities across the broad island.

The Korean War severely disrupted community life, but Mass and gatherings resumed around 1952. In 1955 the Ganghwa area came under Gimpo Parish, while local Catholics worked toward an independent parish and a permanent church. On January 29, 1958, Fr. Chrysostom Jang Geum-gu arrived and Ganghwa Parish formally began. Securing a church site and establishing a stable parish community were major tasks in this first stage.

Soon afterward, the Incheon region was entrusted to the Maryknoll Missioners, and missionary pastoral work became active on Ganghwa as well. The parish cared for mission stations across the island and linked Catholics living in widely separated villages. As the Catholic population and local circumstances changed, some mission communities later developed into separate parishes or were reassigned to new mother parishes. This process shows how Catholic life on Ganghwa expanded from a central parish into a network of local communities.

Present-day Ganghwa Parish stands at the center of that long development. Its history brings together small communities that preserved the faith, a period when mission stations sustained Catholic life, the postwar establishment of the parish, and later missionary expansion. In this sense, the history of Ganghwa Parish is closely intertwined with the broader growth of the Catholic community on Ganghwa Island.