About this place
Samgi Mission Station belongs to Hwangdeung Parish of the Catholic Diocese of Jeonju and is a local center of Catholic life maintained by the community of Samgi-myeon in Iksan. It remains listed in the current diocesan directory as a mission station under Hwangdeung Parish and has its own chapel together with a long memory of village Catholic life. It is a clear example of the traditional mission-station structure that allowed Catholics in rural areas, at a distance from the parish church, to pray and sustain community relationships close to home.
The chapel preserves an altar transferred from Hwangdeung Parish when that church was remodeled, an altar dating from before the Second Vatican Council. Together with the chapel built through the offerings and labor of local Catholics, it gives visible form to the memory of the community. Samgi is therefore significant less for its scale than for the continuity of faith and the place that generations of local Catholics created and preserved together.
History & origins
The history of Catholic mission life in Samgi begins in 1941, when Oryong and Seokbul Mission Stations were established under Changin-dong Parish. At that time Philip Park Heun-gyu moved to Gujeong-ri in Samgi-myeon and operated a pottery workshop. Employees and local Catholics gathered in his home for mission-station prayers. The communities formed around these two mission stations and the household prayer gathering eventually became the foundation of today's Samgi Mission Station.
When Hwangdeung Mission Station was raised to parish status on March 19, 1960, Oryong and Seokbul were merged to form Samgi Mission Station under Hwangdeung Parish. The community then numbered about eighty Catholics. Park Heun-gyu donated roughly 700 pyeong of land to the diocese, and parishioners collected small amounts of rice as seed money and made and laid bricks themselves in order to build the present chapel.
The mission chapel was blessed by Father Seo Jeong-su on December 8, 1974, and on January 26 of the following year newly ordained Father Park Jong-sang celebrated his first Mass there. A statue of Mary and Stations of the Cross were later added, and the building underwent interior and exterior repairs. When Hwangdeung Parish church was remodeled, an altar that had been used before the Second Vatican Council was transferred to Samgi and preserved there. The merging of smaller mission communities and the construction of the chapel through the gift of land and the labor of local Catholics are the defining features of Samgi's history.
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- 한국천주교주교회의 온라인 주소록
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Jeonju Diocese (Diocese of Jeonju)
Official website: https://www.jcatholic.or.kr
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