Saint Andrew Kim Taegon

The Church in Korea has a distinctive beginning. It was founded and sustained by lay people. Christian books reached Korea through scholars who traveled to Beijing, and the faith took root there on its own, so that when the first foreign missionaries, priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, arrived in 1836, they found Korean Catholics already practicing.

Andrew Kim Taegon was born in 1821 into a noble family of the Gimhae Kim clan. His parents were converts, and his father turned the family home into a kind of domestic church where Christians and newcomers to the faith came to be baptized. His father, uncles, and grandfathers were all later martyred. Andrew was baptized at fifteen, and one of the first French missionaries sent him to Macau to prepare for the priesthood.

He returned to Korea as a deacon in 1844 to prepare for the arrival of Bishop Jean Ferréol. He arranged a boat with an entirely Christian crew and sailed to Shanghai to fetch the bishop. There he was ordained a priest, and the two men slipped into Korea in secret after an adventurous journey. They worked together under constant threat of persecution. Andrew's dignified manner and his understanding of local ways brought good results for the mission.

In 1846 the bishop asked him to arrange for letters to reach Europe through the bishop of Beijing, but while meeting Chinese boats he was discovered and arrested. Because he was a nobleman, he was questioned in turn by the mandarin, the governor, and finally the king. He stayed faithful to his God throughout, rejecting every attempt to make him renounce his faith, even under severe torture. On 16 September 1846 he was beheaded at Seoul on the banks of the Han River, the first Korean priest to die as a martyr. His last words to the crowd, as they are recorded, were that his dealings with foreigners had been for his religion and his God, that he was dying for God, and that his immortal life was about to begin.

Bishop Ferréol, who died of exhaustion in 1853, asked to be buried beside him. He had loved the young priest, he said, as a father loves a son. Pope John Paul II canonized Andrew and 102 other Korean martyrs in Seoul on 6 May 1984, and he is the patron of Korean clergy.

Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, pray for us.