Jingyo Catholic Church

History & origins

The history of Jingyo Parish began with a mission community. According to the Diocese of Masan, the Jingyo mission station was established in November 1963 under the leadership of Father Ju Bu-ui Constantius of Okbongdong Parish and was initially under Sacheon Parish. In December 1968 a catechetical room was built, expanding the community’s space for activities, and jurisdiction later passed to Hadong Parish. From its mission-station years, the local community gradually built the foundations needed for an independent parish.

The purchase of land in Jingyo-ri in October 1970 made preparations for a parish more concrete. Over the following years, Catholics sustained the mission community and expanded its pastoral base, and in May 1989 construction began on a rectory that would allow a priest to reside locally. This period was one of gradually putting in place the facilities and pastoral structure necessary for transition to an independent parish.

On March 27, 1990, the Jingyo mission station was elevated to a parish and its first resident pastor was appointed. Nearly twenty-seven years of preparation after the establishment of the mission station thus led to the beginning of an independent parish. Jingyo Parish subsequently became a center of Catholic life in eastern Hadong, serving local Catholics together with nearby mission stations.

The wider Hadong area preserves traces of Catholics who moved south while fleeing nineteenth-century persecutions. Public cultural records state that some Catholics dispersed into parts of Hadong around the Byeongin and Mujin persecutions and that priests from the area were ordained in the first half of the twentieth century. However, the institutional line leading directly to the present Jingyo Parish becomes clear with the establishment of the mission station in the 1960s, so the earlier presence of Catholics should be distinguished from the later parish foundation process.