Gwangju Catholic Church

History & origins

Catholic villages and mission stations had existed in the Gwangju region since the persecution era, but the Gyeongan mission station that directly developed into today’s Gwangju Parish began in the town of Gwangju around 1936. Catholics arriving from several surrounding communities gathered there, and after the mission station came under Sindang-dong Parish in 1948, the faithful prepared a small chapel. In 1957 they purchased a private house as part of preparations for an independent parish.

The Gyeongan mission station was established as an independent parish in July 1958. The faithful later secured a larger church site, and when the Diocese of Suwon was erected in 1963 the parish’s jurisdiction changed from the Archdiocese of Seoul to the new diocese. The present church site was acquired in the 1960s, and after a long construction process the church was completed in the mid-1970s, when the parish name also settled into its present form, Gwangju Parish.

As the parish grew, its territory was repeatedly adjusted. Sinjang Parish was separated in 1967 and Docheok Parish in 1977, and continued population and Catholic growth later led to the creation of parishes including Gonjiam, Gwangnam-dong, Opo, and Chowol. Education also became an important part of parish life: in the 1970s the parish operated the “School of Love” for young people who had been unable to continue formal schooling, and later developed kindergarten and educational facilities.

In 2018 the parish marked its sixtieth anniversary with a Mass honoring its patron, St. Andrew Kim Taegon, and in 2023 it observed its sixty-fifth anniversary. Its development from a mission station into the central parish from which many later communities emerged offers a clear view of the expansion of modern Catholic pastoral life in the Gwangju area of Gyeonggi Province.