South Korea’s Catholic bishops have reaffirmed their commitment to dialogue and cooperation with North Korea, urging the faithful to pray for healing and unity eight decades after the peninsula’s division.
“We will support and actively participate in exchanges with North Korea based on cooperation and reciprocity. We will join forces to work together with those who wish for North and South to live together in ‘the common home,’” read a message from the Special Commission for National Reconciliation of the Korean Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
The statement, titled after Psalm 34 — “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it” — is dated August 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, patroness of the Korean Church, but was released ahead of the feast day.
“After 35 years of suffering during the Japanese colonial period, our nation finally achieved liberation thanks to God’s providence and the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Unfortunately, the joy of liberation was short-lived, and the division that followed continues to cause pain to this day,” the bishops said.
The Commission recalled that June 25 was first established in 1965 as the “Day of Prayer for the Church of Silence” and was later renamed in 1992 as the “Day of Prayer for Reconciliation and National Unity.” Every year around this date, parishes hold initiatives and Masses to pray “for the healing of unhealed wounds and to intercede for the Church in the North.”
While noting moments of progress in inter-Korean dialogue in the 1990s, the bishops lamented that “the Korean peninsula found itself once again paralyzed before we could cultivate the fields with ‘plow and sickles.’”
The message highlighted that through “the Commissions for National Reconciliation” established in each diocese, the Church in Korea has been providing “broad and comprehensive support to the people of North Korea experiencing difficulties due to natural disasters and economic problems, actively promoting exchange through dialogue.”
Echoing the example of Christ, who “obtained true peace by sacrificing himself,” the bishops stressed that peace must not be built “from subjugating others with weapons and military force in a climate of mistrust and hatred.”
They invited the faithful to pray “that God’s grace may heal the pain of division” and called on all Koreans to live as “Pilgrims of hope,” trusting “that what is not possible according to the interests and logic of the world may be possible according to God’s will.”
Quoting Pope Francis’ description of the Earth as “the common home” of humanity, the bishops pledged to “depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it (Psalm 34:15) on the Korean peninsula.”
