Seoul opens the cause for beatification of Card. Kim

Archbishop from 1968 to 1998, a "friend of the poor and the marginalized," he was a key figure in the growth of the Korean Church and the defense of human rights. With him to the altars were also the first Bishop Bruguiere and Fr. Bang, who by starting the first local religious congregations gave a strong impetus to inculturation.

Seoul (AsiaNews) - The Archdiocese of Seoul has officially opened the cause for the beatification of Card. Stephen Kim Sou-hwan (1922-2009), its archbishop for 30 years and a key figure in the recent history of the Church of South Korea.

Along with him, a diocesan commission formally established March 23 will also instruct the causes of Msgr. Barthelemy Bruguiere (1792-1835), a French Mep missionary who was Korea's first vicar apostolic (although he actually died in China without being able to reach the country because of persecution) and religious Fr. Leo Bang Yu-Ryong (Mu-A Andrew) (1900-1986). 

The opening of the causes for the beatification of Card. Kim and Fr. Bang represents an important sign for the Korean Church: the examination of heroic virtues this time will not, in fact, concern figures from the era of persecution, who in martyrdom gave their lives for the Gospel, but a bishop and a priest whom many still remember and whose pastoral action led to the extraordinary growth of the Catholic community in the last decades of the 20th century.

"Card. Kim," reads the statement from the Seoul Archdiocese on the formal opening of the cause of beatification, "was loved and respected by many for his personal example of virtue, his contribution to the growth and esteem for the Korean Church, and his commitment to the affirmation of human rights and democracy.

In particular, as a 'friend of the poor and marginalized,' he treated the humblest as if they were another Christ, based on a fundamental compassion for man, which is the foundation of Christian thought, thus representing a perfect example of Christian love."

The beatification cause of Card. Kim is also an important message to Korean society today. Indeed, many in the country well remember his courageous work in defense of freedom in the years following General Chun Doo-hwan's coup.

During the June 1987 riots, in particular, many students demonstrating in Seoul against the regime sought refuge in Myeongdong Cathedral. Soldiers wanted to enter the church to arrest them, but Card. Kim made them stop in front of the door, "If you want to take the students, you must first put me down.

After me you must put down the priests, and after the priests there will be nuns. Only then can you take the students." Faced with this gesture, the soldiers retreated without entering the church.

The profile of Fr. Bang, another of the three figures in the Seoul archdiocese for whom the cause for beatification has been opened is also  very significant about the contribution to the spread of Catholicism is in Korea.

He grew up in the early 1900s in a Korean Catholic family, at the same time he was educated as a Confucian scholar by his grandfather, who was a famous scholar at the time. This quite unique path, once he became a priest at the age of 30, helped him accept the special call to found a Korean religious community that would live an ascetic life in the Eastern style.

At that time Korea's culture, identity, economy and very independence were threatened by Japanese imperialism. But the Church itself, then ruled by foreign missionaries, struggled to value Korean identity in the name of a supposed superiority of Western spirituality.

On the contrary, Fr. Bang realized that the most effective way to propagate the faith in Korea was through the Korean way of speaking and thinking.

This insight came to fruition in 1946 with the founding of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Korean Martyrs in the Gae Seong Catholic Church in present-day North Korea. The women's branch was later joined by the priestly Congregation of the Blessed Korean Martyrs, in which he himself was the first to profess vows.

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