Andrew Kim Taegon, Paul Chong Hasang and Companions
(1821-1846)
This
first native Korean priest was the son of Korean converts. His father,
Ignatius Kim, was martyred during the persecution of 1839 and was
beatified in 1925. After Baptism at the age of 15, Andrew traveled 1,300
miles to the seminary in Macao, China. After six years he managed to
return to his country through Manchuria. That same year he crossed the
Yellow Sea to Shanghai and was ordained a priest. Back home again, he
was assigned to arrange for more missionaries to enter by a water route
that would elude the border patrol. He was arrested, tortured and
finally beheaded at the Han River near Seoul, the capital. Paul Chong
Hasang was a lay apostle and married man, aged 45.
Christianity came to Korea during the Japanese invasion in 1592 when
some Koreans were baptized, probably by Christian Japanese soldiers.
Evangelization was difficult because Korea refused all contact with the
outside world except for bringing taxes to Beijing annually. On one of
these occasions, around 1777, Christian literature obtained from Jesuits
in China led educated Korean Christians to study. A home Church began.
When a Chinese priest managed to enter secretly a dozen years later, he
found 4,000 Catholics, none of whom had ever seen a priest. Seven years
later there were 10,000 Catholics. Religious freedom came in 1883.
When
Pope John Paul II visited Korea in 1984 he canonized, besides Andrew
and Paul, 98 Koreans and three French missionaries who had been martyred
between 1839 and 1867. Among them were bishops and priests, but for the
most part they were lay persons: 47 women, 45 men.
Among the
martyrs in 1839 was Columba Kim, an unmarried woman of 26. She was put
in prison, pierced with hot tools and seared with burning coals. She and
her sister Agnes were disrobed and kept for two days in a cell with
condemned criminals, but were not molested. After Columba complained
about the indignity, no more women were subjected to it. The two were
beheaded. A boy of 13, Peter Ryou, had his flesh so badly torn that he
could pull off pieces and throw them at the judges. He was killed by
strangulation. Protase Chong, a 41-year-old noble, apostatized under
torture and was freed. Later he came back, confessed his faith and was
tortured to death.
Today, there are almost 5.1 million Catholics in Korea.
No comments:
Post a Comment