Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate
Religious house
마리아의 전교자 프란치스코 수녀회
About this place
The Siheung St. Clare Community is a community of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary within the Diocese of Suwon, living and serving at Clara House. The Catholic Church Directory in Korea lists it as the congregation’s “Siheung St. Clare Community,” while Clara House’s official information identifies the operating corporation as the Franciscan Sisters. This is not a separate parish church, but a setting where an apostolate of elder care and the life of a religious community meet.
Clara House includes living and care spaces as well as a chapel and operates as a facility caring for elderly women who require long-term care. The universal missionary and service-oriented spirituality of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary takes a concrete form here through care and accompaniment in later life. To understand the St. Clare Community properly, it is important to see both its identity as a religious community and its apostolate within a social-welfare institution.
The facility's official information provides the address, operating corporation, and building layout including a chapel, so the conjunction of a religious community and a care institution is a verified present characteristic rather than an inference. At the same time, the sisters' community and the elderly care facility are not conceptually the same entity; visitors and information users should distinguish the role of the religious community from that of the welfare institution. The meeting of these two functions in one setting forms the distinctive apostolic environment of the St. Clare Community.
History & origins
The history of Clara House began in 1991, when Fr. Kim Byeong-do established a small “grandmothers’ community” in Haan-dong, Gwangmyeong. On May 1, 1992, two sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary began working there, and on November 30 the operation of the home was entrusted to the congregation by Fr. Kim. In 1993, a community of four sisters was formed, giving a stable communal structure to the congregation’s relationship with the home.
As the number of residents grew, additional property was acquired in Haan-dong in 1999, and in 2001 a site for a new care home was secured in Jonam-dong, Siheung. After the existing facility received conditional authorization in 2002, a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Clara House care facility in Siheung was held in March 2004. This marked the decisive transition from the community’s beginnings in Gwangmyeong to the site it occupies today in Siheung.
The new facility in Siheung received completion approval in February 2005, and in March the elderly residents living in Gwangmyeong moved to the new home. Authorization as an elderly care facility followed that month, and the blessing and opening ceremony was celebrated on April 28. The St. Clare Community has since continued its religious life and apostolate of elder care within this facility. The chronology shows how a small community for elderly women grew, through the congregation’s sustained service, into the present care facility in Siheung.
After the opening, the institution continued to adjust its form of operation to changes in the care system. Its official chronology records designation as a long-term care institution in 2008 and a change filing under the then-current law for elderly care facilities in 2010; in 2015, Clara House marked its tenth anniversary at the Siheung site. The chronology also records selection as a top-rated Grade A institution in long-term care evaluations and expansion and improvement remodeling in 2019. These developments show that the history did not end with the move and opening in 2005: the facility continued to adapt to changes in the elder-care system while the congregation's apostolate of care remained rooted in the same place.
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Building information
- Passenger elevators: 1
- 3 above-ground floors · 0 below-ground floors
- Approved for use in 2005
- Total floor area: 2,177㎡
Building-register record · · Source
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Sources and updates
- Information Status
- Official
- Source
- Official source
- Data freshness
- Fresh
- Last updated
- Source
- 한국천주교주교회의 온라인 주소록
Diocese
Suwon Diocese (Diocese of Suwon)
Official website: http://www.casuwon.or.kr
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