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About this place
Sangok-dong Parish is a Catholic parish in the Bupyeong District of the Diocese of Incheon, with the Holy Family as its patron. Today it serves as a center where Catholics in Sangok-dong and nearby areas celebrate Mass and the sacraments and sustain catechesis and community life. Its roots, however, reach back several decades before its elevation to parish status, to the Baekmajang mission-station community. Sangok-dong is therefore best understood not as a community that suddenly appeared when it was elevated to parish status, but as the institutional growth of a local community of faith that continued through war and urban change.
As the parish grew, it contributed to the formation of the pastoral network across Bupyeong by giving rise to several daughter parishes. It has also sustained liturgy, devotional life, education, and local service through facilities such as an adoration chapel and educational spaces, as well as through cooperation with religious communities. Under the patronage of the Holy Family, the present Sangok-dong Parish is significant as a community in which the older tradition of a mission station continues within the life of an urban parish.
History & origins
The Catholic community in the Sangok-dong area traces its beginnings to 1942. Kim Seok-tae Matthias, a Catholic from Gongju Parish, moved to Baekmajang in Incheon and began gathering seven or eight Catholic households in the area. On August 15, 1942, Father Im Jong-guk Paul of Dapdong Parish formally established Baekmajang Mission Station and appointed Kim as its first lay leader. Activities were interrupted at times around liberation from Japanese rule and during the Korean War, but from 1951 the community was reorganized with help from a U.S. military chaplain in Bupyeong, and in January 1952 a small hall was completed and blessed. The community then continued under Bupyeong Parish and later Bupyeong 1-dong Parish.
As the Catholic population grew, Bupyeong 1-dong Parish began preparing in 1968 to elevate Sangok-dong Mission Station to parish status and secured a site of about 1,200 pyeong at the present location. A convent was built that year, and in August 1969 a church, meeting rooms, and catechetical rooms were completed. The church was notable for movable wall sections that could be removed to create a large assembly space. It was dedicated on February 15, 1970. On November 1 of that year Sangok-dong Mission Station was formally elevated to a parish, with Father A. V. Keane becoming its first pastor.
The parish later divided its territory several times as the population and Catholic community of Bupyeong continued to grow. Hyosung-dong Parish was separated in 1981, Bupyeong 3-dong in 1982, and Sangok 2-dong, now Sangok 3-dong, in 1986. In 1983 pastoral responsibility for the parish was entrusted to the Society of Mary, and the following year the Marianists established the Chaminade retreat house, making collaboration with religious life another strand in the parish’s development.
During the 1990s the church and related facilities were repaired and an adoration chapel was added. Sangok-dong’s history thus runs from a small gathering and mission station in 1942, through wartime interruption, church construction and elevation to parish status, and the later creation of daughter parishes as it grew into an urban parish. The present church carries forward the continuity of that older mission-station community.
Korean Catholic Places Encyclopedia
Sangok-dong Catholic Church: history and architecture
Read about the place's history, architecture, people, and events in the Korean Catholic Places Encyclopedia.
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Building information
- Passenger elevators: 1
- 3 above-ground floors · 1 below-ground floors
- Approved for use in 2015
- Total floor area: 4,508㎡
Building-register record · · Source
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Sources and updates
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- Diocese source
- Data freshness
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- Last updated
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- Francisco Diary
Diocese
Incheon Diocese (Diocese of Incheon)
Official website: http://www.caincheon.or.kr
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