Pope to beatify 124 Korean martyrs

During his August visit to Korea, Pope Francis is to beatify Paul Yun Ji-chung, the nation’s first martyr, as well as 123 companions who were killed for the faith in the 19th century.

Aug 07, 2014

VATICAN: During his August visit to Korea, Pope Francis is to beatify Paul Yun Ji-chung, the nation’s first martyr, as well as 123 companions who were killed for the faith in the 19th century. He will be in South Korea Aug 14-18, visiting the shrine of the martyrs of Seo So-mun the morning of Aug 16. Later that day, he will travel to Seoul’s Door of Gwanghwamun to say Mass and beatify Paul Yun Ji-chung and his companions.

Being a strictly hierarchical society made up of privileged scholars and nobility on the one hand, and commoners and slaves on the other, Christianity was seen by the authorities as dangerous heterodoxy to the political system of Confucianism, and as a religion that intended a social revolution. Catholics called themselves “friends of the Lord of Heaven”, implying a relation to God based on equality, unacceptable to Confucians.

Authorities tried to prevent the faith from spreading by prohibiting Catholic books, then available in both Korean and Chinese. Widespread, violent persecution occurred in several spurts thoughout the 19th century, with more than 10,000 persons martyred. The first of these persecutions occurred in 1791.

Paul Yun Ji-chung was converted by his uncle, a scholar, and that year he and another Catholic, James Kwong Sang-yon burned their ancestral tablets, acting in accordance with their understanding of Catholic teaching. In what became known as the Chinsan incident, the two members of the nobility were charged with heterodoxy from Confucian norms, and beheaded.

The next violent persecution was in 1801, when hundreds of Catholics were executed, and hundreds more exiled. The same happened in 1839, a few years after missionaries arrived from Paris. In 1846, the Pyong-o persecution claimed another round of martyrs for Korea, including Andrew Kim Tae-gon, its first native priest. The Pyong-in persecution of 1866 claimed most of the martyrs for Korea – 8,000 were killed, including nine foreign priests. -- ucanews.com

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