Francis Ch'oe Kyŏng-hwan

Francis Ch'oe Kyŏng-hwan (Korean: 최경환 프란치스코) was a nineteenth-century Korean Catholic lay catechist and martyr. He was born in 1805 at Magok, in the Hongju district of Chungcheong Province, then part of the Joseon Kingdom. The Catholic faith had reached Korea in 1784 through lay scholars who encountered Christianity in Beijing, and it spread for decades with almost no resident priests. The Joseon state regarded Catholicism as a heterodox teaching that threatened Confucian ritual and social order, and it banned the religion. Communities therefore lived in secrecy, often in relatively remote villages. Ch'oe was raised in a Catholic family in this underground Church. He earned his living as a farmer and took on the role of catechist, teaching doctrine, preparing people for the sacraments when a priest could visit, and helping to hold the local congregation together.

He married Maria Yi Sŏng-nye, a fellow Catholic. The marriage produced several children. Their son Thomas Ch'oe Yang-ŏp was sent out of the country to study for the priesthood in mission seminaries associated with the Paris Foreign Missions Society. Thomas was ordained a priest in 1849 and returned to Korea as the second Korean-born Catholic priest, after Saint Andrew Kim Taegŏn. He served as a missionary priest in his homeland until his death from illness in 1861. Francis Ch'oe thus belonged to a family that linked the lay catechetical leadership of the early Korean Church with the first generation of native clergy. Accounts of the Korean mission present him as a committed catechist who encouraged Catholics to remain steadfast when persecution intensified.

In 1839 the Joseon court launched the Gihae persecution, a nationwide campaign against Catholics. Officials targeted missionaries, catechists, and prominent lay believers. Francis Ch'oe was arrested and transferred to the capital, Seoul. There he was interrogated and tortured in an effort to make him recant. He refused to apostatize. He died in prison in Seoul in September 1839 from the effects of torture and imprisonment, rather than by public execution. Many of his companions were beheaded at the Seosomun execution ground; his own death in custody was nonetheless recognized by the Church as martyrdom. His wife Maria Yi Sŏng-nye was arrested after him and was beheaded in 1840. Their children were left orphaned; Thomas was already abroad for studies.

Francis Ch'oe Kyŏng-hwan was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 5 July 1925 as one of seventy-nine Korean martyrs of the persecutions of the 1830s and 1840s. Pope John Paul II canonized him on 6 May 1984 in Seoul, together with 102 other Korean martyrs, during an apostolic visit to Korea. The liturgical memorial of Saints Andrew Kim Taegŏn, Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions is kept on 20 September. In Korean Catholic memory Francis Ch'oe is honored as a married lay martyr and catechist and as the father of Thomas Ch'oe Yang-ŏp. Historical knowledge of his inner life is limited to what can be drawn from Church records of the persecutions and from later tradition surrounding the Korean martyrs; precise details of his early years remain sparse, as is common for rural laypeople of Joseon Korea.