hankyoreh

holding a cross) and Lee Ho-jin

By Song Ho-kyun, staff reporter and Cho Yeon-hyun, religion correspondent

Residents of Gangjeong Village and Miryang, family members of victims in the 2009 Yongsan tragedy, and dismissed Ssangyong Motor workers will be attending the “Mass for Peace and Reconciliation” by Pope Francis at Seoul’s Myeongdong Cathedral on Aug. 18.

The residents of Gangjeong Village, on Jeju Island, have been in the news over the past few years for their opposition to the building of a naval base there, while residents of Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province have been protesting the building of electricity transmission towers near their homes.

Fr. Matthias Huh Young-yup, spokesman for the Catholic Church’s preparatory committee for the Pope’s visit, said on Aug. 5 that the invitations were “basically a definite thing.”

“The only thing we’re discussing now is the number of people invited, since space is limited,” he explained.

The invitations were extended after the Vatican agreed to a request from the groups, with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea Justice and Peace Committee and the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice reportedly playing roles in the process. Official invitations will be delivered as early as this week.

Pope Francis is also scheduled to meet with and console victim family members and surviving students from April’s Sewol ferry sinking at a mass for the Feast of the Assumption at Daejeon’s World Cup Stadium on Aug. 15.

“We had invited family members of the Sewol victims to the Daejeon mass, which is [the Pope’s] first in Korea, but there were problems organizing time for a separate meeting,” Huh said. “But then we received word from the Pope that he would be meeting them personally.”

The Pope is scheduled to meet the Sewol family members who are protesting at the beatification site, Gwanghwamun Square, for legislation of the special Sewol law, and Danwon High School students in the vestry after the mass.

“We had already asked the Sewol families to take part in an Aug. 16 beatification, and we received their positive response,” the preparatory committee added.

Ahn Byung-wook, a professor at the Catholic University of Korea, praised the religious community for its “attempts to embrace social issues as their own,” but added, “The specific, policy-based solutions to these conflicts will need to come not from the Pope, but from South Korea’s politicians.”

The sentiment was echoed by Park Geun-yong, chief of the collaboration secretariat for the group People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy.

“Everyone - from the government that adopts a ‘just do it and see what happens’ approach to its state projects to the companies that unilaterally impose sacrifices and the politicians who have failed to even pass the special Sewol Law - ought to reflect on the Pope’s actions,” Park said.

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