26 April, 2013 - The bishops of South Korea have asked the Vatican’s Congregation
for the Causes of Saints to open the beatification process for Bishop Francis Borgia
Hong Yong-ho of Pyongyang and his 80 companions of North Korea, who were martyred
by the Stalinist regime of Kim Il-sung immediately after the division of the Korean
peninsula in 1948. This is an important step towards the recognition of the suffering
of the Catholic community in the north, decimated by the ideological hatred of the
Kim regime. Ordained a priest on May 25, 1933, Bishop Hong was appointed vicar apostolic
of Pyongyang on March 24, 1944 by Pope Pius XII. In 1962 when Pope John XXIII elevated
Pyongyang to diocese, he appointed as its first bishop, Msgr Hong, who has becomes
a symbol of persecution against Catholics in North Korea and in general in the communist
regimes. Although he disappeared on March 10, 1962, he has never been officially
declared dead. The Vatican’s Pontifical Yearbook still lists Bishop Hong as bishop
of Pyongyang. At present, the Catholic Church in North Korea is in appalling conditions.
Since the end of the civil war in 1953, the three local ecclesiastical jurisdictions
and the whole Catholic community have been brutally wiped out by the Stalinist regime.
Not a single local priest has been left alive and all foreign clergymen have been
expelled. In the early years of persecution by Kim Il-sung, North Korea's first dictator,
an estimated 300,000 Catholics have vanished. Despite this, the Pope has kept alive
the clergy assigning sedi vacanti et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis to some South Korean ordinaries.
At present, in addition to Cardinal Cheong, who administers the diocese of Pyongyang,
there are Mgr John Chan Yik, bishop of Chuncheon and administrator of Hamhung, and
Fr Simon Peter Ri Hyeong-u, abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Waegwan and administrator
of Tokwon. The result is that today there are no Church institutions nor resident
priests in North Korea. Still there are some Christians. However, following the inauguration
of the first Orthodox church last August in the North Korean capital, the remaining
Catholics are the only community without a minister to celebrate their faith. According
to credible sources, actual Catholics number 800, far fewer than the 3,000 recently
acknowledged by the government. The so-called North Korean Catholic Association, an
organization created and run by the regime, claims to represent local Catholics. The
Holy See has always discouraged visits by its leaders to Rome since there are still
serious doubts about their legal and canonical status. There are strong suggestions
that they are Communist Party officials, not Catholics. (Source: AsiaNews)