Korean parishes establish reconciliation committees

Moves put in place to prepare pastoral activities if reunification of the two Koreas ever takes place.

Seoul:  Despite increasing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the Catholic Church is busy establishing parish-level committees to help arouse interest in national reconciliation and reunification.

At the last plenary held in March, the Korean Bishops' Conference recommended that every parish set up such a group.

"The starting point for the unification ministry should be the parishes," said James Byeon Jin-heung, researcher at Uijeongbu Institute for Peace in Northeast Asia.

"The parish-level committees will arouse people's interest in national reconciliation and become the base for peace education and supporting [the people in] North Korea," said Byeon.

Dioceses like Uijeongbu and Chunchon, which are near the border with North Korea, are already establishing their pastoral committees on reunification.

But the pace is fastest in Incheon Diocese; last July, their Committee for National Reconciliation held a meeting with 29 parish-level committees that had already been established.

On Aug. 17, Dowon Church in Daegu Archdiocese established its own committee for unification ministry. "We encounter many North Korean refugees around us but we are short of concern for them," said Father Pius Yi Ki-soo, president of the Daegu Archdiocese's Committee for the National Reconciliation. "I hope the [Dowon Church] parish will become the center of support and care for them."

For Uijeongbu Diocese, Bishop Peter Lee Ki-heon asked his parishioners to set up their own groups and helped issue committee guidelines.

Chunchon Diocese, also bordering North Korea, will set up its own unification program in 2017.

The North and the South have been divided since Korea's liberation from the Japanese at the end of World War II. The Korean War (1950-53) made them bitter enemies.

Seoul Archdiocese has long stressed the church's role in reconciliation and for the reunification of the Korean peninsula. It established the Korea Reconciliation Committee in 1995, to foster an atmosphere of forgiveness and reconciliation, and to help in the formation of peace workers.

Source: UCAN