The Oldest Catholic Bishop

[Nihil Obstat]

Officially, the oldest Catholic Bishop today is Francis Hong Yong-ho, the bishop of Pyongyang.
He was born in 1906, making him 106 years old as of 12 October.

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/Francis_Hong_Yong-ho.jpg/220px-Francis_Hong_Yong-ho.jpg[/img]

In 1949 he was arrested by Kim Il-Sung's regime. He was never heard from again, and is almost certainly dead.
Pyongyang currently has an apostolic administrator (Nicholas Cheong Jin-Suk), with Bishop Hong Yong-ho still listed as the bishop. The Annuario Pontificio officially lists him as "missing", in order to direct attention towards the plight of the Church in North Korea.

Cardinal Cheong Jin-Suk [url="http://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_10278_l3.htm?id=10278"]said this in 2006[/url]:



[indent=1][i]Q: Are there priests and Catholic bishops in North Korea?[/i]
CHEONG JINSUK: [b]No. There’s no knowledge of priests surviving persecution that came in the late ’forties, when 166 priests and religious were killed or kidnapped.[/b] The Pontifical Yearbook continues to describe as «missing» the man who was the bishop of Pyong-yang at the time, Monsignor Francis Hong Yong-ho, who today would be a hundred years old. It’s a gesture by the Holy See to point to the tragedy that the Church in Korea has suffered and is still going through.[/indent]

[Ed Normile]

I thought it was Bishop Oldy Olsen ?

[img]http://www.theshrubbery.com/0898/oldy.jpg[/img]

ed

[Nihil Obstat]

[b]Are there priests and Catholic bishops in North Korea? [/b]
CHEONG JINSUK: No. There’s no knowledge of priests surviving persecution that came in the late ’forties, when 166 priests and religious were killed or kidnapped. The Pontifical Yearbook continues to describe as «missing» the man who was the bishop of Pyong-yang at the time, Monsignor Francis Hong Yong-ho, who today would be a hundred years old. It’s a gesture by the Holy See to point to the tragedy that the Church in Korea has suffered and is still going through.
[b]Do Catholic believers and churches still exist in the North? [/b]
CHEONG JINSUK: Before 1949 there were 55,000 Catholics in North Korea. When the persecution was unleashed many escaped, but many were killed. Today some say there are still a thousand Catholics, other say there might be three thousand. But there’s no certain knowledge. The churches were all destroyed, though when the Olympics took place in South Korea, suddenly one was built in Pyong-yang, out of nowhere… But it was no miracle: it’s easy to see that it was a move by the regime in an attempt to show that in the North there were Catholics also free to profess their faith. Which obviously doesn’t match up to reality.
[b]Who runs that “church”? [/b]
CHEONG JINSUK: A so-called Catholic Association headed by a layman, Jang Jae-yon, who has recently also been appointed president of the North Korean Red Cross.
[b]Do they celebrate mass there? [/b]
CHEONG JINSUK: At times, when there are priests passing through. It happened, for example, last year when the late-lamented Pope John Paul II died. By chance a Korean priest from an American diocese, from Texas I think, happened to be there in those days, so celebrated a mass in suffrage for the dead Pontiff.

[Basilisa Marie]

It's situations like these that make me thankful for religious freedom in America.

[Archaeology cat]

There was a Korean priest concelebrating Mass this morning at my parish.

[Debra Little]

Officially, the oldest Catholic Bishop today is Francis Hong Yong-ho, the bishop of Pyongyang.
He was born in 1906, making him 106 years old as of 12 October.



In 1949 he was arrested by Kim Il-Sung's regime. He was never heard from again, and is almost certainly dead.
Pyongyang currently has an apostolic administrator (Nicholas Cheong Jin-Suk), with Bishop Hong Yong-ho still listed as the bishop. The Annuario Pontificio officially lists him as "missing", in order to direct attention towards the plight of the Church in North Korea.

Cardinal Cheong Jin-Suk said this in 2006:


 

Q: Are there priests and Catholic bishops in North Korea?
CHEONG JINSUK: No. There’s no knowledge of priests surviving persecution that came in the late ’forties, when 166 priests and religious were killed or kidnapped. The Pontifical Yearbook continues to describe as «missing» the man who was the bishop of Pyong-yang at the time, Monsignor Francis Hong Yong-ho, who today would be a hundred years old. It’s a gesture by the Holy See to point to the tragedy that the Church in Korea has suffered and is still going through.

 

Wow that is an amazing article.  Thanks for the link.

[Socrates]

It's situations like these that make me thankful for religious freedom in America.

 

Which we should never take for granted.