Janghowon Church

History & origins

The name “Janghowon Parish” appears in Catholic history before the establishment of the present parish. In 1896, Father Bouillon of the Paris Foreign Missions Society moved the Buyonggol seminary parish to Wangjang-ri in Eumseong, North Chungcheong Province, and the parish was called “Janghowon Parish.” That earlier parish later developed into Gamgok Parish and should not be treated as the same community as the present Janghowon Parish in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province.

When the Apostolic Vicariate of Cheongju was separated from the Apostolic Vicariate of Seoul in 1958, ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the area was also divided. The older Janghowon parish on the Chungcheong side became Gamgok Parish, while Janghowon remained as a mission station on the Gyeonggi side. On March 19, 1960, that mission station was raised to parish status, forming the present Janghowon Parish; it began as a large rural parish responsible for nineteen mission stations and about 1,200 Catholics.

At first there was neither a church nor a rectory, so a public building in Jinae-ri was used as a temporary church, and a rectory was secured about two years later. Construction of a church began in 1964, with parishioners even making bricks themselves, and in May 1970 a two-story cement-block church was completed and dedicated.

This sequence shows that today’s Janghowon Parish did not simply inherit an old ecclesiastical place-name. It grew from a mission station into a parish within the new jurisdictional structure formed after 1958. Its long tradition of caring for numerous rural mission communities remains an important background for understanding the historical character of Janghowon Catholic Church. A 2016 parish-history account also notes that mission-station buildings in places such as Narae-ri, Bangchu-ri, and Geumho-ri continued to serve as bases for small communities. Even after the jurisdictional structure changed from the nineteen mission stations under the parish at its founding, this illustrates how the parish retained a pastoral tradition of linking the town church with smaller rural communities. The history of Janghowon’s church building is therefore best read together with the changing network of Catholic life across the surrounding countryside.