Jindong House of Joseph Retreat House

About this place

Jindong Joseph’s House is a retreat and prayer house registered in the Diocese of Masan and is a religious-community site entrusted to the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The directory of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea classifies it as a “retreat/prayer house,” and at the same address also lists a branch community of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus called “Jindong Joseph’s House.” It should therefore be understood not as a parish church but as a place centered on religious community life, prayer, and the apostolate of retreats.

According to a religious sister’s article published by the Diocese of Masan, the community at Jindong Joseph’s House lives as an “ecological community,” farming, praying, and operating a retreat house. A distinctive feature of the community is its effort to cultivate the land in ways that reduce harm to nature and to connect life with all creatures to its religious vocation. Visitors should understand the site not simply as lodging or a church, but as a place where prayer, retreat ministry, and ecological religious life are practiced together.

For this reason, the spiritual meaning of Jindong Joseph’s House cannot be captured fully by the functional label “retreat house.” The community’s effort to integrate prayer, work, and relationship with nature into one way of life shapes the character of the place itself, and those who come for retreat encounter that way of religious life as part of the experience.