Hyeongnam Catholic Church

History & origins

The Catholic history of the Hyangnam area reaches much further back than the establishment of the present parish and is connected with older mission-station communities. According to material published by the Diocese of Suwon on Sujik-ri Mission Station, the Apsil mission station in today’s Hyangnam Parish was established in 1894 under Gatdeungi Parish, against the background of Catholic villages and communities that had already developed in the Yanggan area during the nineteenth century. The mission community continued its life of faith through several successive buildings and, in the 1980s, prepared and dedicated the mission chapel that it uses in the modern period.

Changes in urban development and residential patterns eventually brought a new pastoral structure to Hyangnam. Diocesan material explains that Hyangnam Parish was created in 2008 as the area developed, while the Catholic Directory of Korea records the parish’s establishment date as September 2, 2008. The link with the older mission communities did not end with the creation of the parish. Members of Sujik-ri Mission Station, for example, raised funds and donated seating for the parish church, taking part in the formation of the new parish community.

This process shows that the history of Hyangnam Parish is not simply that of a new parish created by recent development. A parish responding to a changing population and living area was established on top of a much older tradition of Catholic villages and mission stations, and the two strands continued within one pastoral jurisdiction. The fact that Hyangnam Parish still includes several mission stations is a visible sign of that continuity in local Church history.