Holy Korean Martyrs

Today we remember the martyrs of Korea, and theirs is a story unlike any other. The Catholic Church in Korea wasn’t founded by missionaries: it was founded by lay people. In the 1700s some Korean scholars, reading books brought from China, became convinced of what they were reading and began to practice it on their own. One of them went to Beijing to be baptized, came back, and baptized the others. For years that community carried on without a single priest. The persecutions began at the end of the century. After King Sunjo’s edict of 1802 and the massacres that followed, the Christians, left without leaders, wrote to the pope to ask for priests; the first missionaries arrived only in 1837, slipping in secretly. Among the martyrs are Andrew Kim Taegon, the first Korean priest — who studied in Macau, came back in secret, and was killed at twenty-five — and Paul Chong Hasang, a catechist, who held the community together for thirty years. John Paul II canonized one hundred three of them in Seoul on May 6, 1984: it was the first canonization celebrated outside Rome in centuries. Francis beatified another one hundred twenty-four in 2014. All told, it’s estimated that more than ten thousand Christians were killed in those persecutions. Almost all were lay people, and a great many were women.