Cheolsan Catholic Church

History & origins

As the population of the Gwangmyeong area grew rapidly in the 1970s, discussion began about the need for a separate parish in Cheolsan. Fr. Jang Deok-ho, who was responsible for Gwangmyeong Mission Station, had already encouraged the securing of land for a church in the Cheolsan area, and by the early 1980s Gwangmyeong Parish had obtained a site with a future parish division in mind. With the incorporation of Gwangmyeong as a city and continued urbanization, the Catholic population increased sharply, and Cheolsan Parish was established from Gwangmyeong Parish in March 1982.

There was no church building when the parish began, so Sunday Mass was initially celebrated in the spacious living room of a parishioner’s home. Only about eight months later was the community able to secure a basement space. From 1983 the parish undertook full-scale construction of a permanent church, and parishioners contributed their own labor through a long building process. After roughly six and a half years of construction, the new church was dedicated on October 20, 1989. The red-brick building incorporated gently sloped routes to improve access for older people and persons with disabilities.

As the parish grew, new Catholic communities in surrounding areas became independent. Haan Parish was separated from Cheolsan in February 1996, followed by Gwangbuk Parish in January 1998. Alongside evangelization, the parish devoted attention to people in poverty, persons with disabilities, and other neighbors in need; parish historical materials repeatedly identify this concern as an important strand of its tradition.

In 2012, the parish celebrated its thirtieth anniversary and looked back on the difficult early years of church construction and its history of local evangelization. The anniversary also offered an opportunity to remember how the original parish territory had changed through the creation of daughter parishes. The history of Cheolsan Parish thus combines the rapid urban growth that made a new parish necessary, the prolonged communal effort to build a church, and the later expansion of Catholic life through both neighborhood service and parish divisions.