Opening the Ancient Documents to the Public

The CBCK Committee for Culture (President: Most Rev. Peter Lee Ki-heon) opened a thousand of the documents of Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) to the diocesan archives and Catholic history research institutes on July 30, 2010.

In addition, three volumes of read documents were distributed to them for study of the history of Catholic Church in Korea.

Most of these documents written by missionaries of MEP during the most significant period from 1797 to 1874 help for the study of the establishment of Catholic Church in Korea as well as of the persecutions in 1839 and 1866.

All the interested parties now are expected to actively lead the study of the Catholic Church in Korea as they modify and supplement its history and collect more documents to fill in lacking parts.

The lately distributed volumes are named as 'A-MEP Vol. 577 Corée 1797-1860' and 'Vol. 579 Corée 1797-1874', given by MEP for the documents related to the Catholic Church in Korea.

These three volumes are the very first step of discovering the historical material from MEP, the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America-Maryknoll Fathers & Brothers (M.M.), and Missionary Society of St. Columban (S.S.C) that was started in 1997.

The committee is planning to open systematically other documents after examination.

Bishop Lee Ki-heon, the president of this committee said that it showed acknowledgement of maturity of the Catholic Church in Korea that the mission societies that sacrificed for us entrusted their documents that involves its history to the CBCK Committee for Culture. He also added that these documents should be shared among all the dioceses in Korea for the study of its history.