The Vatican Appoints Archbishop Yoo Heung-sik as Cardinal... Fourth Korean Catholic Cardinal

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] Archbishop Lazarus Yoo Heung-sik (70), Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, has been officially appointed as a cardinal.

On the 29th (local time), Pope Francis announced 21 new cardinals, including Archbishop Yoo, after leading the Sunday Angelus prayer at the Vatican Apostolic Palace.

Archbishop Yoo becomes the fourth cardinal in the history of the Catholic Church in Korea. This comes about 11 months after his appointment as a prefect of the Vatican. The Korean Catholic Church has produced Cardinals Stephanus Kim Sou-hwan (1922?2009), Nicolaus Jeong Jin-seok (1931?2021), and Andrea Yeom Soo-jung (78). Cardinals hold a clerical position with authority and honor second only to the pope in the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Until now, all appointed cardinals had been former Archbishops of the Seoul Archdiocese. This time, for the first time, a cardinal has emerged from the Vatican prefecture, which is expected to further elevate the status of the Korean Catholic Church. The nine prefects of the Vatican's administrative departments (Congregations) are customarily classified as cardinals, so his appointment was anticipated.

Cardinal-elect Yoo was born in 1951 in Nonsan, Chungnam Province. He graduated in 1979 from the Faculty of Dogmatic Theology at the Lateran University in Rome, Italy, where he was ordained a priest. He then served as the senior assistant priest at Daeheung-dong Parish in Daejeon, director of the Solmoe Shrine retreat house, director of the Daejeon Catholic Education Center, director of the pastoral office of the Daejeon Diocese, and professor and president of the Catholic University of Daejeon, before being ordained a bishop in 2003.

Since 2005, he has served as the Bishop of Daejeon Diocese, and in June of this year, he was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, responsible for the duties and lives of priests and deacons worldwide. This was the first case in the 240-year history of Korean Catholicism and the Vatican where a Korean cleric was appointed to a senior position above undersecretary.

Cardinal-elect Yoo is considered one of the few Korean clerics who communicate very closely with Pope Francis. The Pope's visit to Korea in August 2014 was made possible through a letter from Cardinal-elect Yoo inviting him to attend the Asian Youth Day scheduled to be held at the Solmoe Shrine in Dangjin, Chungnam. Since then, he has reportedly met with the Pope individually at the Vatican on several occasions to discuss major issues concerning the Korean Catholic Church.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.