성 김대건 안드레아
Korea's first native priest. Six months ordained. Beheaded on a sandbank in the Han River, in 1846.
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성 김대건 안드레아
Into a Catholic family in a kingdom that executed Catholics. His great-grandfather and his father were both martyred.
One of the first three Korean seminarians. He travelled overland and by sea to Macau to study, because there was nowhere in Korea to do it.
The first Korean Catholic priest. He sailed home aboard the Raphael to a country where his priesthood was a capital offence.
His work was charting sea routes so that more missionaries could enter. He was arrested doing it.
Beheaded on the Han River sandbank used for executing the most serious criminals. He was twenty-five, and had been a priest for six months.
John Paul II declared him a saint among the 103 Korean Martyrs — the first canonization held outside Rome in modern times.
Half the Korean martyrs were lay. Many were women. Many were teenagers. Korean Catholicism is the only Church in the world founded by laypeople without a missionary — scholars who converted by reading books carried back from Beijing, and baptised each other.
Take courage! I have overcome the world.John 16:33 — theme of World Youth Day 2027
The 17th World Youth Day, and the first ever held in Korea. St Andrew Kim Taegon is one of its five patron saints — alongside John Paul II, Carlo Acutis, Josephine Bakhita and Frances Xavier Cabrini.
3 August 2027 · Seoul, Republic of Korea
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Jesus Youth Canada was born out of World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002. Twenty-five years on, we are going to Korea — and there's a place for you in it. Details are on the way.