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About this place
Jinan Parish belongs to District 1 of the Diocese of Jeonju and has pastoral jurisdiction over the whole of Jinan County. Its patron is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and current diocesan information records it as the central parish serving Catholics in mountain and rural areas through a network of mission stations. Because one parish covers a broad county, its role in linking the parish church with communities in outlying villages is especially important.
Catholic life in the Jinan area took root from the late nineteenth century through believers who had moved into the region after periods of persecution and through local mission-station communities. Jinan Parish carries forward the history of those communities being organized into a parish and moving their center several times as they developed. The present church is therefore more than a parish church in the county seat: it is a regional center connecting many mission stations and the older Catholic-village tradition of Jinan.
History & origins
The roots of the Catholic community in Jinan reach back to the late nineteenth century. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains that by around 1876 Catholics fleeing persecution in Chungcheong Province were living in scattered parts of Jinan, and that Eoeun-dong Mission Station was established in 1888. As the Catholic population grew, Jinan Parish was separated from Jeonju Parish and established at Eoeun-dong on September 22, 1900, with Father Kim Yang-hong as its first pastor. New church buildings were erected in 1903 and 1909, and Yeongsin School was founded in 1909 as part of the parish’s educational work.
The center of the parish moved several times thereafter. In 1922, during the pastorate of Father Lee Sang-hwa, the parish moved to Handul in Maryeong-myeon, which for a time became the pastoral center of the Jinan area. In 1952 the parish moved again, this time to Gunha-ri in Jinan-eup, and came to be known as Jinan Parish; a new church was completed in 1956. Handul became a mission station again, was re-established as a parish in 1977, and returned to mission-station status under Jinan Parish in 1985.
A major modern turning point came in December 1999, when an electrical fire destroyed the parish church. The community soon began rebuilding and completed a new church in April 2002. Re-establishing the parish center after the loss of the previous building illustrates the continuity of a community that had already passed through repeated moves and periods of reconstruction.
Today, the Diocese of Jeonju records Jinan as a parish established in 1900, serving the whole of Jinan County together with numerous mission stations. Its journey from Eoeun-dong to Handul and finally to Jinan-eup encapsulates the way mountain Catholic villages and mission stations developed into the present regional parish structure.
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Jeonju Diocese (Diocese of Jeonju)
Official website: https://www.jcatholic.or.kr
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