The brave priests who should also be known as martyrs of Korea

On September 20, the Catholic Church remembers 103 men, women, and children who died as martyrs in Korea. These canonized saints, mostly Koreans but also French missionaries, died during waves of anti-Catholic persecution by Korean authorities during the nineteenth century.¹

But those martyrs are only a fraction of the thousands of Catholics who died for their faith in Korea from the eighteenth century and into the twentieth.² Although most of those uncanonized martyrs were native Koreans,³ many priests, religious sisters, and religious brothers from other countries have also been executed for their faith in Korea.⁴

Of course, some of these Catholics were killed during the Korean War by communists. That’s probably the reason that their canonization causes have been delayed. Leaders of various communist countries would construe the public act of beatifying Catholics killed during the Korean War to be a political provocation. But we shouldn’t have to wait for permission from North Korea to tell the stories of these martyrs. Catholics should be able to make their own decisions about whether these men’s deaths were caused by their faith or by their politics.

Catholic missionaries have sought to bring faith in Christ to Asia for many centuries, and there were many priests and religious serving in Korea in the early twentieth century. However, since Japan controlled Korea at that time, many missionaries from Allied countries were arrested or forced to leave the country during World War II. After the end of that war, Catholic missionaries returned to Korea. Many of those missionaries were members of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban.

Anthony Collier was born in Clogherhead, Ireland, and was a Columban priest. He traveled to Korea as a missionary in 1939. During World War II, the Japanese placed him on house arrest. He survived the war and was later able to return to his parish in Chuncheon, South Korea.

By June 25, 1950, incursions by the North Korean army into South Korea had become frequent. At the time, neither Fr. Collier nor anyone else in South Korea knew that the date of June 25 would mark the beginning of the Korean War, a three-year armed conflict that would cost 5 million lives.

Although Fr. Collier could have left the country, he chose to stay with his flock. Just two days after the start of the war, communists entered his town, tied him to a Korean layman named Gabriel Kim, and shot him. Fr. Collier shielded Gabriel’s body from the bullets. He died, but Gabriel survived to tell of the priest’s final act of self-sacrifice.

James Maginn was born in Butte, Montana. He too was sent to Korea as a Columban priest before World War II. During the war, he refused to leave his Korean parishioners in Samcheok, South Korea, narrowly survived four years of house arrest and starvation, and again refused to leave his flock when fighting erupted in 1950. Communist forces invaded his town, and he was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. On July 4, nine days after the start of the war, Fr. Maginn was executed.

Patrick Reilly was born in Drumraney, Ireland. He served as a Columban priest in England during World War II and was then sent by his order to the Korean town of Mukho. Fr. Reilly refused to leave his people and was found shot through the chest on August 29, two months after the war began.

Patrick Brennan was born in Chicago. After serving as a parish priest for several years, he recognized God’s call to serve as a missionary. He asked for and received permission to join the Columbans and was sent to Korea in 1937. During World War II, he was arrested and repatriated to the US. He served as a chaplain in the US Army throughout the war, was a participant in the D-Day landings, and was awarded the Army’s highest honor for bravery for non-combatants for his service.

After the war, he returned to Korea as a monsignor, having been named the apostolic prefect of Gwangju. He was also known as a great storyteller, gifts typical of an Irishman and a Chicagoan. For example, he was able to make people laugh over his colorful retellings of his encounters with the local police, who often harassed him.

On July 17, the Army sent a messenger to warn Msgr. Brennan that they could no longer protect him and the other missionaries from the growing conflict. Brennan conveyed that information to the others. Soon afterward, he cheerfully bid goodbye to 15 Columban priests and missionaries as they left the country. But Brennan and two other priests chose to stay.

His two companions were Thomas Cusack and John O’Brien. Those two men had both been born in Ireland, where they too had become Columban priests. Fr. Cusack had been assigned to Korea before World War II and spent most of that war under house arrest, narrowly escaping death. Fr. O’Brien had only been sent to Korea in 1949. But all three priests decided to stay and support their people during such dangerous times.

Communist forces arrived in the city a few days later. Initially, the communist soldiers pretended to be friendly and said they respected the priests and their religion. Soon afterward, they showed up again and demanded that Msgr. Brennan give them the names of all the Catholics in the town. Brennan refused. Recognizing the increasing danger, one of the priests secretly consumed all the hosts in their church’s tabernacle. Although they were repeatedly threatened—and told they would be killed immediately if they did not answer—the priests refused to divulge the names of Korean Catholics.

We would not know what happened next if other survivors—a Korean translator, an American soldier, and a Korean woman who was also arrested—had not told us the rest of the story.

All three priests were taken to jail and interrogated for hours while being deprived of food and sleep. They were later moved to a Franciscan monastery in Daejeon, which was being used as a prison by the communists. Like the other prisoners, the three priests were given only two balls of rice to eat each day, and they were forced to stand on the roof of the monastery during air raids to serve as human shields.

But the priests also shared their blankets and food with the other prisoners, sang songs with them—Fr. O’Brien had an excellent singing voice—and encouraged them to trust in God, even in that terrible prison. At one point, a prisoner in a nearby cell was overheard being interrogated about Catholics, and the three priests spent the night on their knees, praying for that prisoner.

As the UN forces moved toward Daejeon, the communists recognized that they would be forced to abandon the area. Perhaps to avoid leaving evidence of their mistreatment of their prisoners, they brutally massacred all of them. At least 5,000 men and women were killed in this one town between September 23 and 27. The bodies of the 600 prisoners in the Franciscan monastery were thrown into a 60-foot deep well, some while they were still alive. Msgr. Brennan and Frs. Cusack and O’Brien were killed with those 600 men, apparently on September 24, 1950.

In 1952, the well was emptied of the bones of the prisoners, their bones were cremated, and the ashes were buried on a nearby hill. In 1996, when the city decided to develop the area, families of the prisoners were allowed to remove some of the remains.

There is one final detail about this brutal massacre for those who appreciate ghost stories. After the war, the Franciscans sold the monastery in Daejeon to an order of religious sisters. According to one report, the sisters noticed strange noises in the monastery soon after they moved in, such as banging, screaming, and voices. After learning of the murder of 600 prisoners on their property, the sisters began to say additional prayers for the repose of the souls of the dead every Thursday night. Eventually, the phenomena stopped.

The seventh and final Columban martyr of the Korean War, Francis Canavan, might have seemed the most unlikely missionary to die as a martyr. He was from a large family in Headford, Ireland, and was known to be quiet and not particularly healthy. After becoming a Columban priest and being sent to Korea, he wrote back to his family about his attempts to learn Korean and Korean traditions. He recognized the possibility of being martyred due to political unrest, and he even made jokes about it in his letters.

After the start of the Korean War, Fr. Canavan was arrested and taken to an internment camp. He was one of 700 prisoners who were forced to march through the mountains in freezing weather. The prisoners had to sleep in the open and were given barely any food. Ninety-eight people died on this nine-day-long, infamous “Death March.” Although Fr. Canavan had contracted pneumonia, survivors later told of his heroic courage in helping and encouraging those who were sick or elderly and who struggled to keep up with the others. On December 4, he told a companion, “I will be having my Christmas dinner in Heaven,” and he died on December 6.

Those seven men—now called Servants of God Anthony Collier, James Maginn, Patrick Reilly, Patrick Brennan, Thomas Cusack, John O’Brien, and Francis Canavan—did not die for their countries or their economic systems. They died, as did the Good Shepherd, for their sheep. How many Korean Catholics survived that bloody civil war with their faith in Christ intact because of the example given by those brave men? Only God knows.

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