Sts. Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn

St. Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn (1821–1846) was the first native-born Korean Catholic priest and is honored today as the foremost of the Korean Martyrs. He was born on August 21, 1821, at Solmoe in Korea's Chungcheong province, into a family of committed converts at a time when Christianity was outlawed in Korea; his own father, Ignatius Kim Che-jun, was martyred for the faith in 1839. The Korean Church was remarkably founded largely by laypeople in the late eighteenth century, and it grew under waves of fierce persecution throughout the century that followed. Baptized at about the age of fifteen, Andrew was chosen for the priesthood and sent on a dangerous journey of some 1,300 miles to the seminary in Macau. After years of study and several failed attempts to re-enter his homeland, he was ordained a priest in Shanghai in 1845 by Bishop Jean-Joseph Ferréol, then returned to Korea to catechize in secret and to help French missionaries slip past the border guards. In June 1846, while arranging a sea route for incoming missionaries, he was arrested. After months of imprisonment and interrogation, Andrew was beheaded on September 16, 1846, at Saenamteo on the Han River near Seoul. He was twenty-five years old and had been a priest for barely a year. From prison he wrote a final letter urging his fellow Christians to persevere: his faith, he insisted, was worth dying for. Pope St. John Paul II canonized Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn in Seoul on May 6, 1984, together with Paul Chŏng Ha-sang and 101 companions—the 103 Korean Martyrs. Their memorial is kept on September 20, and Andrew is venerated as a patron of Korea and of Korean clergy. Pilgrims honor him today at the Solmoe shrine of his birthplace and at the Saenamteo martyrdom site in Seoul, enduring witnesses to a Church that was born and grew under the cross.