St. Andrew Kim Taegon and Companions

Who they were

Korean Christianity has a founding story unique in Church history: it was begun by no missionary at all. In the 1780s Korean Confucian scholars encountered Christian books brought from Beijing, studied them, concluded they were true, and baptized each other. It was a Church self founded by lay intellectuals, growing for decades before a priest ever arrived.

The persecutions that followed were ferocious, costing some ten thousand deaths across the century, and from them 103 were canonized in Seoul in 1984, the first canonization ever held outside Rome. They are named for two men. Paul Chong Hasang was a lay leader who spent his life smuggling clergy in and petitions out, and wrote a defence of the faith to the government that condemned him. Andrew Kim Taegon was the first native Korean priest, trained in Macau, smuggled home, and beheaded within a year, at twenty five. His last letter to his people, written from prison, is among the treasures of the martyrology.

Why people turn to St. Andrew Kim Taegon and Companions

Korean Catholic families. And, from the founding story, every study group, book club, and lay led ministry: a whole national Church stands as proof of what laypeople reading seriously can do.

How to ask their intercession

For the parish book study by name, and for the young person discerning priesthood against the odds, which was Kim Taegon's exact road.