NORTH KOREA - The Benedictine Missionary Sisters of Tutzing: Experience divine consolation in worldly persecution

by Paolo Affatato

Pyongyang (Agenzia Fides) - The hearts of the Benedictine sisters of Tutzing beat for North Korea. And it is a heart that continues to pour out today, with prayer and charity, to what was its original mission in the East. The Congregation of the "Benedictine missionaries of Tutzing" (Congregatio Sororum Benedictinarum Missionarum de Tutzing), was founded in Reichenbach in 1885 by the monk Fr. Andreas Amrhein OSB (1844 -1927) as a female branch of the congregation of the Benedictine monks of Saint Otilia. In 1887 the mother house of the sisters was established in Emming (St. Ottilien) and in 1904 in Tutzing, in Upper Bavaria. The Benedictines of Tutzing are not cloistered, but carry out an active apostolate. "We live a monastic and missionary charism. We follow the Benedictine rule and, together with contemplation, we live spirituality and the apostolate in the world, wherever we are called. We always do it not as individuals, but as a Benedictine community.
As a small Christian community that lives on faith, hope and charity", explains Korean Sister Jun Seok Sye, Superior General of the Congregation, describing the missionary presence in Africa, Asia and the Americas, with 130 communities and about 1,300 sisters spread over four continents. The mission also began in North Korea: it was Benedictine Bishop Bonifacio Sauer, OSB, abbot of Tokwon Abbey, in the north of the Korean peninsula, who invited the sisters to go to Korea to follow, at an educational, social and pastoral level, girls and Korean girls who – due to local customs and traditions linked to Confucianism – could only be accompanied by female figures. "It was not going to be easy to learn the Korean language and adapt to the environment, so young and energetic sisters were sent. This is how our missionary adventure in Far East Asia began", she says. The first four German Benedictine pioneers set off and, on a 48-day journey by ship, across the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and then the Pacific, they landed in North Korea, in Wonsan, welcomed by the Benedictine fathers. "Our mission began, by God's providence, on November 21, 1925, at 4 in the afternoon", says the Superior, recalling the moment of that missionary adventure. A month after their arrival, the first Korean girl asked to experience monastic life in the institute. The nuns immediately began working as teachers at the newly established school for poor boys and girls in Wonsan, called "Guardian Angel School", which accommodated more than 400 children. "They were very poor, they lived in conditions of absolute essentiality. That condition was in itself a testimony: they were materially poor, poor in spirit, according to the spirit of the evangelical beatitudes", points out the Superior. After living the first years in a modest house, they moved to the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, built in Wonsan thanks to Chinese benefactor. The Benedictines also opened a dispensary, with herbs and medicines, run by Sister Hermetis Groh, caring for the sick. In 1927 there were already 16 young Korean women who wanted to join the first female Benedictine community, and that year several of them officially became "postulants": the Benedictine and missionary charism spread and attracted souls. The mission continued with prayers, liturgies and processions, with apostolic work in schools, with visits to villages, where the sisters taught catechism to children, young people and adults. "Our place, our life, is to be with God and to be with the least", continues Sister Jun Seok Sye.
Everything changes in 1945 when, with the intervention of the Soviet Union and the independence of North Korea, the government applies a policy of religious persecution. The monastery is confiscated and closed. Expelled, displaced and mistrusted, the nuns sisters did not want to flee and chose to remain close to the children, close to their people. The Superior's story becomes dramatic: "At 11 p.m. on May 10, 1949, by order of the government, the entire religious community of Wonsan was confiscated and the Korean sisters were forced to disperse".
The German sisters were taken to the Oksadok concentration camp, where they remained until November 19, 1953, after the end of the Korean War. The sisters suffered inhumane treatment and were forced into what will go down in history as the "death march", a forced journey towards Manchuria in the middle of a harsh winter. In those years of hardship and cruelty, 17 Benedictine religious and 2 Tutzing sisters died. The surviving sisters write in their poems: "While we buried our brothers and sisters, we sang: Christ, my king, until the end I swear my love, pure as the lily, and my fidelity. And we asked ourselves: who will be next?" On the morning of September 16, 1952, Sister Fructuosa Gerstmayer was the last to reach the Father's House. "Exhausted by hunger, frost and disease, they survived as exiles. Only God was their consolation and companion. The persecuted Christ was with them", the Mother Superior recalls today. Not knowing if that time of persecution would end, the monks and sisters continued to pray with the liturgy of the hours. When they managed to secretly grow some wheat seeds and pick some wild grapes, they could secretly celebrate mass at night in the country houses. With the armistice ending the Korean War, the prisoner of war exchange program began in January 1954.
Forty-two German monks and 18 nuns were repatriated to Germany via the Trans-Siberian Railway. "After the repatriation, despite the cruel treatment they received in the concentration camps, sisters, once recovered, asked to return to the mission in Korea", recalls Sister Jun Seok Sye. Eight of them had to give up because of tuberculosis and other illnesses, but 10 returned to the newly formed nation of South Korea. "Without saying a word of evil towards their persecutors", says today the Korean sister who, as a young sister, declares herself impressed by that testimony of "love for the enemy". Already in 1950, the 13 Korean Benedictine sisters fled from the North had providentially been reunited in the refugee camp set up by the Catholic Church in Busan.
That meeting was the beginning of a new mission seed. The sisters survived by washing clothes and knitting for the US Army. While the fate of the Wonsan sisters remained unknown, the Tutzing mother house sent more missionaries to South Korea, in a mission that still exists today. In 1951, the sisters founded a community in Daegu, and in the 1956 it became a priory. Because of the growing number as one priory of Daegu, Seoul priory was erected in 1987. To commemorate the testimony of faith of the past, in May 2007 the beatification process began for the thirty-eight servants of God from Tokwon Abbey, martyred during the wave of persecutions. The process is called "Beatification of Abbot-Bishop Bonifatius Sauer, O.S.B., of Father Benedict Kim, O.S.B. and companions", including four Benedictines, two Germans and two Koreans. Between 1949 and 1952, fourteen monks and two nuns were executed after harsh imprisonment and torture.
During the same period, seventeen other monks and two nuns died of starvation, disease, hard physical labor, and poor living conditions in the camp. Abbot-Bishop Bonifatius Sauer died in a prison in Pyongyang in 1950. As a result of that testimony, the Benedictine Orders present in Korea today belong to the Congregations of St.Ottilien and Tutzing (Germany). Then came the Olivetan nuns (from Switzerland) in 1930s and the Olivetan monks (from Italy) in the 1980s. "Our religious life, today as yesterday, is to give our life to Christ, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Our life is to give ourselves to the love of God, as our pioneer martyrs did. A life of prayer and the Gospel, to give glory to Him", says the sister, recalling that today there are about 450 Benedictine sisters of Tutzing, in Korea. The hearts of the Tutzing Benedictine sisters continue to beat for North Korea. Sister Jun Seok Sye continues: "Every evening, with all the Korean faithful they recite an Our Father-Hail Mary for peace and reconciliation in Korean Peninsula, entrusting the past, the present and the future to God. Our sisters of the Congregation around the world pray with special intention for Korean peninsula every 13th of month. Through all possible channels, we try to send humanitarian aid. We welcome and accompany the refugees who have fled from the North for the reintegration of children and adults into society." "After all - concludes the sister, quoting a passage from the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans (Rom 8:28) - we know that everything contributes to the good of those who love God, who have been called according to his plan". (Agenzia Fides, 7/7/2023)

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