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About this place
Sanghyeon-dong Catholic Church is a parish in the Suji District of the First Vicariate of the Diocese of Suwon and is listed as the central parish of the district. Its patron is St. Francis Xavier. It serves as a major Catholic center for people in the Suji and Gwanggyo area of Yongin, where Mass, the sacraments, catechesis, and community life are carried out.
The parish is also a place where the memory of early Korean Catholicism is recalled locally. Within the parish grounds, Jikam Garden contains a memorial to Jikam Gwon Il-sin, Francis Xavier, one of the leading figures in the founding generation of the Korean Catholic Church. The fact that his baptismal name is the same as the parish patron adds a further symbolic connection.
Sanghyeon-dong is therefore both a large modern parish formed amid new-town growth and a place that links the memory of an early Korean Catholic to the faith of the present community. Its church building and Jikam Garden bring liturgical and educational functions together with historical remembrance in a single parish setting. The combination of its present role as a district-center parish and its remembrance of Jikam Gwon Il-sin shows Sanghyeon-dong as both a major territorial parish and a place that carries an explicit dimension of reflection on Church history.
History & origins
Sanghyeon-dong Parish was established on January 28, 2003, after separation from Suji Parish. St. Francis Xavier was chosen as patron, and the new community provided a structure for the rapidly increasing Catholic population accompanying new-town development. In the years after establishment, the parish organized its community while preparing to build an independent church.
Construction formally began with a groundbreaking ceremony on April 17, 2010. A traditional topping-out ceremony followed in November 2011. Diocesan records at the time describe a large complex with one basement level and three floors above ground, including the main church, catechetical rooms, an adoration chapel, and a hall. The plan was intended to house the full life of a growing parish rather than provide only a worship space.
After construction was completed, Bishop Mathias Lee Yong-hoon dedicated the church on October 27, 2012. The new church, completed nine years after parish establishment, symbolized the community's permanent settlement after years of developing parish life. Its liturgical, educational, and meeting spaces later provided the physical basis for Sanghyeon-dong's role as a central parish in the Suji District.
The parish later added a further layer of historical memory. In 2022, a memorial to Jikam Gwon Il-sin, Francis Xavier, was erected in Jikam Garden on the parish grounds. This linked the history of a relatively young new-town parish with the witness of the founding generation of Korean Catholicism and broadened the meaning of Sanghyeon-dong from a modern parish center to a place of ecclesial remembrance as well. The roughly nine years from parish establishment in 2003 to dedication in 2012 show how a rapidly growing new-town community moved step by step from administrative separation to possession of a permanent church. The later Gwon Il-sin memorial demonstrates that the parish’s identity continued to develop even after construction, expanding to include a consciously cultivated memory of local and national Catholic history.
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Building information
- Passenger elevators: 1
- 3 above-ground floors · 1 below-ground floors
- Approved for use in 2012
- Total floor area: 7,497㎡
Building-register record · · Source
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Sources and updates
- Information Status
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- Source
- Diocese source
- Data freshness
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- Last updated
- Source
- Francisco Diary
Diocese
Suwon Diocese (Diocese of Suwon)
Official website: http://www.casuwon.or.kr
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