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About this place
Buron Catholic Church is a parish in the Seowonju district of the Diocese of Wonju, serving Catholics in Buron-myeon, Wonju. The Guide to the Catholic Church in Korea lists Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus as its patron and gives Buron-myeon as its pastoral territory. In a broad rural and mountainous area, the parish serves as the local center where Catholics celebrate Mass and the sacraments, receive catechesis, and sustain community life.
Buron also preserves Catholic memories that are much older than the establishment of the present parish. Materials for the official Wonju diocesan pilgrimage route describe Catholic villages formed in the mountains from the nineteenth century by believers fleeing persecution. Today's Buron Parish is a modern independent parish within that historically significant region, linking the memory of older Catholic settlements with the life of a present rural parish. It is important, however, not to treat the entire history of those old Catholic villages as if it were the institutional history of the current parish, which began at a later, specific date. The present structure, in which the whole of Buron-myeon forms one parish territory, is significant because it connects Catholics dispersed across a broad rural area within a nearby local community.
History & origins
The Catholic roots of the Buron area reach back to the persecution period of the late Joseon era. Materials for the official pilgrimage route of the Diocese of Wonju explain that from the 1830s, Catholics fleeing persecution entered the mountainous parts of Buron and formed several Catholic villages. These communities preserved their faith in hiding and laid an early foundation for Catholic life in the region, becoming part of the background from which the later parish communities of Munmak and Buron developed.
In modern times, the Catholic community of Munmak and its mission stations served the Buron area. The Catholic Encyclopedia of Korea records that the Munmak community grew from mission-station status and was established as a parish on September 10, 1958, with parts of Buron-myeon and Buron Mission Station included in its pastoral territory. The present Buron Parish therefore did not appear without a preceding community; it developed from Catholics in the Buron area who had long remained within the pastoral structure of Munmak Parish.
Buron Parish was established as an independent parish of the Diocese of Wonju on September 19, 2003, with Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus as patron. Catholics in Buron-myeon thus moved from a mission community under Munmak Parish to an independent parish structure. The memory of persecution-era Catholic villages, the period under Munmak Parish, and the creation of the independent parish in 2003 form the main historical sequence leading to today's Buron Catholic Church.
The official Wonju diocesan pilgrimage material also describes a renewed mission community in the Munmak area around 1938. Seen together with the later growth of that mission into Munmak Parish in 1958 and its pastoral responsibility for the Buron area, the creation of an independent Buron Parish in the 2000s was not an isolated event. It can be understood as a later pastoral division after a long sequence linking persecution-era Catholic villages with the modern mission-station and parish structure.
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Wontong Diocese (Diocese of Wonju)
Official website: http://www.wjcatholic.or.kr
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