With US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un locked in a tense battle of rhetoric, the Catholic Church is urging both heads of state to choose a path of dialogue.
Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, head of the International Justice and Peace Committee at the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference, has written to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (pictured) to call for Washington to seek a diplomatic solution with Pyongyang.
He supports the proposal of South Korean President Moon Jae-in to reopen negotiations with North Korea, backed by Catholic bishops in South Korea. “This avenue, unlike most others, offers the Korean Peninsula a future free from military conflicts or crises, which could simultaneously threaten entire nations and millions of lives in the region,” said Bishop Cantú.
The head of the Church in South Korea, Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, has urged Catholics to pray for peace in the region and called upon North Korea to “come to the discussion table and abandon their nuclear weapons” for the “safety and future of all Koreans”.
Catholics on the US Pacific Island Territory of Guam said prayers for peace last Sunday in the face of North Korea’s missile threat. The largely Catholic territory should pray for a “just resolution of differences, and prudence in both speech and action”, said Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes, Coadjutor Archbishop of Agaña, Guam. North Korea has threatened to launch missiles towards Guam, which houses two US military bases.
The Church in Guam is also facing a separate abuse crisis. Last month it released a list of 41 properties that could be sold to help settle more than 90 cases of clerical sexual abuse. Agaña archdiocese, in a “Hope and Healing” initiative, is trying to settle the cases out of court.
For the small minority of around 12,000 Christians in communist-ruled North Korea, the increased tension between North Korea and the US was exceedingly worrying, Lutz Drescher, the former East Asia expert for the Evangelical [i.e. Protestant] Mission in Solidarity, has said. Mr Drescher, who is a member of the Ecumenical Forum for Korea and regularly meets with North Korean Christians, was speaking to the German Protestant press agency Der Evangelische Pressedienst on 10 August. Their fears, he said, were based on memories of the Korean War (1950-1953), which the older generation had experienced and during which North Korea experienced massive bombardment.
Christians in North Korea were under pressure from two sides, Mr Drescher explained. As a small minority in a country of 25 million inhabitants, they continually had to justify themselves for their “western religion”. At the same time, the West accused them of not sufficiently opposing the North Korean regime. They deplored that North Korea was always seen in “black and white” and wished it could be viewed in a more differentiated way.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva has underlined the importance of the Churches’ role in relaxing tensions in Korea. Despite the present crisis, the WCC has stated that the Korean Christian Federation, a Protestant body in North Korea, and the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), in South Korea, were in close contact. “This channel of communication is unique,” said Peter Prove, director of International Affairs at the WCC.
The two associations had jointly prepared the International Sunday of Prayer for North and South Korea held on 13 August, two days before the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation on 15 August 1945.
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