Posted on 05/23/2022 7:13:35 PM PDT by marshmallow
SEOUL, South Korea (CNS) — One of South Korea’s most senior clergymen says he believes the Catholic Church in communist North Korea is growing, although Catholics live in hiding and endure persecution.
Archbishop Victorinus Youn Kong-hi, 97, former head of the Archdiocese of Gwangju, South Korea, made the remarks in a recently published book on the history of the North Korean Church, reported ucanews.com.
“The Story of the North Korean Church” is a Korean-language, comprehensive book on the history of the Catholic Church in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula based on eight interviews with the archbishop last year.
Writer Kwon Eun-jung penned the book sponsored by the Catholic Oral History Records for Peace on the Korean Peninsula project of the Catholic Institute for Peace in Northeast Asia, a body under the Catholic Diocese of Uijeongbu, Korean news portal chosun.com reported on May 13.
In the book, the elderly churchman, who was born in an area now covered by North Korea, gave vivid testimonies of how the Church thrived in the territory before the Korean Peninsula was divided between the democratic South and communist North and the eruption of the Korean War. The missionaries distributed medicines to poor people who needed medical attention, established schools and carried out other charitable works to support local Catholics, who were poor but very enthusiastic, he said.
The archbishop recalled how Catholic clergy, religious and laypeople were gripped by fear as the communist forces attacked churches as the war broke out in 1949.
At midnight May 9, 1949, an unexpected, emergency bell rang at the Tokwon Benedictine monastery and seminary near Wonsan. The German-born chief abbot, Bishop Boniface Sauer, was dragged away by the communists, recalled the archbishop, who was a student in the seminary at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at osvnews.com ...
not anymore....
lol... it was a secret...
The polish used their faith to rid themselves of communist rule. I trust the koreans can do the same.
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