Jangjaedong Catholic Church

History & origins

Catholic faith in Jangjae-ri is recorded by the Diocese of Masan as having taken root in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Around 1865, three brothers of the Indong Jang clan from Yokjido moved to Jangjae-ri. One of them, Jang Ik-geum, married a Catholic woman from Munsan and was baptized, and is remembered as the first Catholic of the village. He shared the faith with relatives, and after Lee Geuk-seo became Catholic, Lee’s support made it possible to use a small house as a temporary mission station.

In 1898, Father Taquet, who was developing the Catholic mission in the Jinju area, acquired a thatched house and rice field in Jangjae-ri, providing a more stable base for the mission community. Jangjae-ri was for a time under Munsan Parish, and when Jinju Parish was established in 1926 its jurisdiction shifted there. During this period, the community gradually developed from a mission station whose members traveled to a distant parish for Mass and the sacraments into a community preparing for its own church.

In 1931, Father Jeong Su-gil of Jinju Parish built a church in Jangjae-ri, and it was dedicated on November 10 of that year during a pastoral visit by the bishop of Daegu. After this long mission-station period, Jangjaedong was elevated to a parish in 1938. The sequence shows that the parish did not arise from a single building project, but from a village community in which faith was transmitted, a mission station matured, and a church and parish gradually developed.

The general history of the Diocese of Masan likewise classifies Jangjaedong among the parishes established in 1938. Yet the parish cannot be explained by its institutional establishment date alone, because decades of village Catholic relationships, mission-station life, and pastoral care from Munsan and Jinju preceded it. A long accumulation of mission experience came first, and the parish was established on that foundation; this is especially important in understanding its history.