Sisters of the Holy Family Education Center

History & origins

The Holy Family Sisters began on December 25, 1943 in Hyehwa-dong, Seoul, under the leadership of Fr. Sung Jae-deok of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. The congregation arose from a desire to form a women’s religious community that would care for people in poverty and respond to the needs of the Church amid the difficult social conditions of the late colonial period and the years surrounding the war. It received ecclesiastical approval in 1944, and the first professed members followed in 1947, giving the community a more stable religious structure. Its apostolates later expanded into social welfare, health care, education, parish cooperation, and other fields.

As the community grew, the original Hyehwa-dong facilities became insufficient for religious life, formation, and apostolic work. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture records that the Holy Family Sisters prepared a new motherhouse in 1968 and moved the motherhouse from Hyehwa-dong to the Jeongneung area on August 31 of that year. This move was an important step in establishing the congregation’s long-term base in Seongbuk-gu. In later decades the congregation revised its constitutions and name and expanded its ministries according to changing needs while continuing to emphasize an incarnational spirituality lived among the poor.

The education center now located at 46 Gireum-ro 9-gil is listed in the Korean Catholic directory as an education and retreat house operated by the Holy Family Sisters. Public official and historical sources do not, however, establish the exact opening date of the facility specifically called the “Education Center.” It is therefore more accurate not to identify the 1968 motherhouse move as the center’s opening date, but to understand the present education and retreat facility within the continuing history of the congregation’s Seongbuk-gu base since that period. It is therefore important to place the present education center within the congregation’s broader history without creating an unsupported opening date for the facility itself. The center can be understood as a current space supporting formation and retreat needs as the Seongbuk-gu community continues its long social and educational apostolates.