The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican has sent the Archdiocese of Seoul (South Korea) the letter of “nihil obstat” (there is no impediment) to begin the process of beatification of Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, who He led that jurisdiction for 30 years, between 1968 and 1998.
According to the Vatican agency FidesStephen Kim was “the eleventh archbishop of the archdiocese of Seoul and the first cardinal of Korea.”
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The other three cardinals of Korea are: the late Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk (1931-2021), Andrés Yeom Soo-jung, Archbishop Emeritus of Seoul, 78 years old; and Lázaro You Heung-sik, prefect of the Dicastery of Clergy in the Vatican, 72 years old.
In 2023, the current Archbishop of Seoul, Bishop Peter Soon-taick Chung, accepted the request and expressed his intention to begin the process of beatification of Cardinal Kim, for which the diocesan commission for beatification and canonization has formed a historical committee of experts who will investigate the life of the cardinal.
Who was Cardinal Kim?
Cardinal Stephen Kim was Korea’s first cardinal. He was born on May 8, 1922.
According to Catholic Hierarchya website specializing in information about Catholic bishops, was ordained a priest on September 15, 1951, at the age of 29.
He was named Bishop of Masan on February 15, 1966, receiving episcopal consecration on May 31 of the same year.
He was appointed Archbishop of Seoul on April 9, 1968. A year later, on April 28, 1969, he was created cardinal by Pope Saint Paul VI.
Pope Saint John Paul II accepted his resignation on April 3, 1998, after reaching the age of 75, the retirement age for bishops.
He died on February 16, 2009 at the age of 86.
Fides notes that Cardinal Kim “was loved by many for his exemplary life and his virtue. “His contributions to the development of the Archdiocese of Seoul, to the democratic movement under the military dictatorship regime, and to the promotion of human rights are well known.”
They called the cardinal “the friend of the poor and marginalized,” because he treated these people “like Jesus Christ, based on his fundamental compassion for human beings.”
Fides highlights that the solidarity of the Korean cardinal went beyond death, by donating the corneas of his eyes to whoever needed them.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.
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