John Allen:

In the early twentieth century, North Korea was home to a small but flourishing Catholic community, with two territorial dioceses and a territorial abbacy entrusted to the Benedictine Order. During the 1950-53 Korean War, however, the Catholic presence was all but snuffed out – every priest in the country was exiled, imprisoned or executed, and all Catholic institutions were seized by the state.

Benedictine Abbot Primate Fr. Nokter Wolf, for example, told NCR on Oct. 19 that all 18 Benedictines in North Korea at the time of the war perished, either by immediate execution or from eventual death in a labor camp. Their abbey was taken over by the Communists, and is today a Faculty of Agriculture.

The last Bishop of Pyongyang, Francis Hong Yong-ho, is still listed in the Annuario Pontificio, the official Vatican yearbook, as “disappeared” since March 10, 1962. Since that time, the archbishop of Seoul, South Korea, has also been designated the apostolic administrator of Pyongyang.

Today, Hwang described a situation that in some ways seems eerily reminiscent of the catacombs.

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