Committee pushes assassin’s sainthood

[Ahimsa]

Seoul archdiocese’s Preparatory Committee for Beatification and Canonization held a symposium yesterday at the Catholic Center to discuss the possibility of canonizing a “Catholic patriot,” Thomas An Jung-geun.

Thomas An assassinated Ito Hirobumi, Japan’s first prime minister and the first Japanese resident general of Korea, on October 26, 1909, in Harbin, northeastern China. He was later executed by the Japanese on March 26, 1910.

Koreans regard An’s killing of Ito as a symbol of Korea’s resistance against Japanese imperialism. Korea suffered greatly under Japanese colonial rule which ended in 1945.

For years the Catholic Church condemned the murder, but changed its position when the late Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan of Seoul officiated at a Mass for An in 1993, during which he said: “An acted in righteous defense of the nation. The Catholic Church does not regard killing committed to defend the nation from unjust aggression as a crime.”

The overwhelming view of the symposium yesterday was that An should eventually be canonized.

 

[Hastrman]

I’m pretty sure there’s a couple of steps in between “he wasn’t committing murder” and “he should be canonized”.

 

[agnes_therese]

Well, this symposium doesn’t have the final say.

 

[Corki]

Well, this symposium doesn’t have the final say.

Or really **any say **beyond opening the cause. The initial investigation can be costly, especially in terms of manpower. The symposium’s role is really to commit the resources for the initial investigation. What happens after that is beyond their scope of influence.

 

[Hastrman]

People often confuse “saint” and “hero” (one might define “saint” as “holy hero”, come to think of it). Just because someone does something admirable, even good, doesn’t make them holy.

Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, was in many ways an admirable man, but he was also a serial adulterer; hero, I’d say undisputably, but let’s hold off on the canonization (metaphorically, I mean, him having been an Evangelical of some variety) until we see evidence he repented of his infidelity.