Messages and Signs from Naju, Korea

Fr. Joseph Homick's Petition

March 1, 1998

His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
The Vatican

Your Eminence,

I begin this letter with gratitude for all that you and our Holy Father Pope John Paul II are doing to preserve and promote the traditions and the fullness of our Catholic Faith. Yours is a heavy cross in these times of confusion, dissent, and even apostasy, and so I would like to assure you and our Holy Father of my prayers and those of all the monks here in this monastery. (What follows is written in my name only and not as an official representative of the monastery.)

Recently Archbishop Victorinus Youn of the Kwangju(=Gwangju) Archdiocese in Korea has made an unfavorable judgment upon the reported apparitions of Our Lady to Julia Kim of Naju and the miraculous events connected therewith. You have received, I believe, a copy of his judgment as well as a review and respectful critique of that judgment. I have received these as well and I concur with the opinions expressed in that review.

Your Eminence, I have followed the accounts of these apparitions and associated events for a number of years and have come to believe that they are from God. As you know, the phenomenon of mysticism in the Church has language and dynamics all its own, which can be quite extraordinary and hence can be subject to misunderstanding. Despite that possibility, God in His sovereign freedom has often worked strange and marvelous wonders throughout the history of the Church. Some examples are the Eucharistic miracles of Lanciano and Santarem, the stigmata of St. Francis and Padre Pio, and prophetic words and visions like those of St. Don Bosco, St. Bernadette and the children of Fatima, to mention but a few.

In these our times many such wonders have been reported, and I certainly share the Church’s desire for prudence and discernment in these matters, and the application of sound criteria for the determination of authenticity. I have read the accounts and messages of many reported apparitions and locutions of the past several decades. Yet for my own spiritual life I have limited myself to a very few which I believe truly speak the word of God to us. Julia Kim of Naju is among those I consider to have the most significance, value, and authenticity. This comes not only from my assessment of the messages and reported phenomena, but from the spiritual benefit I have personally received through them, and from the “resonance” in my heart to the words and call which I believe are from Our Lady.

I humbly yet urgently request, Your Eminence, that the investigation of Naju be reopened at a higher level than that of the local Ordinary. The points noted in the review of his judgment are serious and merit serious consideration. You know better than I the very sad situation which exists in some parts of the Church, in which even the Shepherds have a mind and will other than that of the Church and tend to discourage their flocks in some ways from embracing and living the rich traditional faith and piety of the Church. By saying this, however, I in no way intend to make a judgment about Archbishop Youn’s good faith or good intention in this matter.

Those who accept the testimony of Julia Kim are among the Lord’s “little ones,” who are loyal to the Pope, devoted to the Blessed Sacrament and to Our Lady. Such devout believers are not to be found in the ranks of the dissenters or the critics of the Church who create such havoc today. Nor are they among the self-appointed and arrogant architects of the “modernization” of the Church and of her compromise with the agenda of the present age (and hence of the distortion or rejection of her teachings). May it not be at the hands of their beloved Church that the morale of these faithful ones is broken and their devotion discouraged!

Our Blessed Mother has done much for me through the messages and witness of Julia Kim. In conscience I can do nothing other than to defend and support her in this time when her message must most urgently be heard and put into practice.

Respectfully and faithfully yours in Jesus and Mary,

Fr. Joseph Homick
Holy Transfiguration Monastery
Redwood, California, USA

Fr. Pietro Kim

I am a parish priest in Korea, who is temporarily in Rome for study. I would like to express my personal opinion regarding the official position of the Church on Naju.

The messages reportedly received by Julia Kim in Naju are mystical experiences and, therefore, are difficult to understand by intellectual reasoning alone.

It seems that we must pay special attention to those messages, however, because of the emphasis in the messages on the Holy Eucharist. Nowadays many people experience difficulty in accepting the Church dogma that the Eucharist is truly the Body of Christ. The Eucharistic miracles in Naju must be God’s expression of His Love to help us accept the reality of the Eucharist.

It may be useful for us to find out if Eucharistic phenomena similar to those experienced by Julia, namely, changes of the Sacred Host into visible Flesh and Blood in her mouth, have occurred in Church history.

One such case was regarding St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church. She experienced changes in the Eucharist in her mouth in Salamanca on April 8, 1571. Enclosed are a few pages in Italian from the book: Relazione Spirituali. Another similar phenomenon can be found in the life of St. Catherine of Siena (S. Caterina du Siena, Le Lettere, a cum di U. Meattini, Milano 1987, n. 25, p. 827).

It is especially noteworthy that St. Teresa of Avila experienced a Eucharistic miracle which was the same as what Julia of Naju experienced.

As a student of theology, I aspire that all of God’s messages received in the Church be examined through appropriate procedures and by proper methods.

Rev. Pietro Kim
Roma, Italia
9 June 1999

Mrs. Therese Yun-Hee Lee

July 20, 1999

His Holiness
Pope John Paul II
Vatican

Your Holiness whom we love so dearly,

We pray for Your Holiness and all the clergy and religious every day, as the Blessed Mother has asked in Naju. We pray fervently after Holy Communion and during rosary prayers especially for vigorous health for Your Holiness who is working so hard for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Your Holiness whom we love so dearly! We feel so sorry to Our Heavenly Mother, who has been chosen as the Lord’s Helper to give an opportunity of salvation to everyone but has been suffering so much pain in her Heart because of the numerous souls who are spiritually blind and deaf and do not understand the Blessed Mother’s pleas that she makes until her throat starts bleeding, saying, "It is not too late yet."

Your Holiness who is our beloved spiritual father! For the past ten years, I have seen many people, both Catholics and non-Catholics, who had alienated themselves far away from the Love of God, return to the bosom of the Father thanks to the Blessed Mother’s messages in Naju. The Blessed Mother has said that when her messages of love are accepted by the Church, they can spread more forcefully to the world, numerous children will repent, and this world will turn into the Lord’s Kingdom. She has emphasized the importance of the Holy Eucharist and Confession. She has brought us special gifts of graces which can be scientifically tested to make the spiritually blind open their eyes and the spiritually deaf begin hearing. However, Satan has been mobilizing all kinds of schemes through humans to block these gifts from God.

Your Holiness! We often hear some of the young priests in Korea preaching what one can expect to hear only from some of the Protestant brethren and ministers. They call the Marian devotion a superstition and accuse those who love and honor the Blessed Mother of promoting division in the Church and being heretical. "The Blessed Mother cannot be a Co-Redemptrix. Even if she appears in front of me right now, I can have a debate with her and win it." I heard this from a young priest while he was severely criticizing the Blessed Mother of Naju. He also said, "To whom does the Church belong? Strictly speaking, not even to God. Then, why do people worship Mary?" I was so shocked to hear this from a Catholic priest. Later, I talked to him as I would talk to my Protestant friends. Then, he softened his position somewhat. I prayed hard for him. He has refrained from criticizing the Blessed Mother of Naju any more.

On another occasion, I heard another young priest saying that it was wrong to make Confession frequently. He said that the only mortal sins were murder, adultery and apostasy and that missing a Sunday Mass was not a mortal sin. Therefore, he continued, if one missed a Sunday Mass, he could receive Communion after repentance. He further said that it was not right to make Confession more than once a month, as even priests do not make Confession more than once a month. Eventually, the pastor found out and corrected him. We felt so relieved, because many people seem to think of Sunday more as a holiday for sports, fishing, and hiking than as the Lord’s day.

Your Holiness! One of my observations has been that those priests who are not faithful to the traditional teachings of the Church and prefer the new complex theology and deceptive talks generally despise the devotion to the Blessed Mother. Especially some of the priests who teach at seminaries seem to be so. Their students will naturally learn from their teachers.

On the other hand, especially in the older generation, we find many priests who are filled with love and humility and love the Blessed Mother dearly. Because of these priests, our spiritual thirst is being quenched. Also, these good priests, almost without exception, accept and cherish the Blessed Mother’s messages from Naju. Their presence has been clouded by the younger priests whose voices have been louder. Now these good priests are gladly participating in the petition for re-investigation of the events in Naju. I am surprised to find that there are so many priests who are supportive of the Blessed Mother of Naju.

The signatures by priests that we are enclosing today are only a beginning. It is our sincere hope that His Excellency Victorinus Kong-Hee Youn of the Kwangju(=Gwangju) Archdiocese will open the re-investigation soon and, thereby, restore his honor and his loyalty to the Lord before retirement. Sometimes I think that the Declaration was more severe on Naju than what His Excellency Youn really had in mind because of the influence from his assisting priests. Many people are aware that the investigation by the committee in Kwangju(=Gwangju) was neither objective nor substantive. The leading members of the committee did not even request any scientific evidence. They made comments like, "How can the Blessed Mother come down from heaven? It is so cold up there," while formally interviewing the witnesses. How can one have confidence in their sincerity?

It is our humble opinion that the teaching authority in the Church has been used for distorting some of the Church doctrines for the purpose of condemning the events in Naju and for persecuting many of the faithful and accusing them of disobedience. We sincerely implore Your Holiness and the Cardinals and Bishops assisting the Holy Father to open a re-investigation of the events in Naju as soon as possible.

Truly yours in Christ,

Therese Yun-Hee Lee
Daegu, Korea

(Mrs. Therese Lee is the coordinator of the petition campaign in Korea for the re-investigation of the events in Naju. She attached this letter to about 5,000 signatures by priests, religious, and lay people in Korea that she mailed to the Holy See in mid-July 1999.)

Hak Yoon (a lawyer and editor of The Catholic Digest)

(The following is a translation of an article in The Catholic Digest, the April 1998 issue, published in Seoul, Korea)

True unity can be promoted by faithful exercise of the teaching authority

In 1980, I was a graduate student in Seoul. While I was visiting Kwangju(=Gwangju) in May, the civil uprising broke out. Unexpectedly, I became a participant. I escaped from the aftermath of the turmoil, first to Sunchon, then to Pusan and finally back to Seoul. In Seoul, I was hiding in my room with my mind filled with the nightmares of Kwangju: pushcarts carrying corpses, young students collapsing by the bullets from the soldiers’ rifles, a woman, who was a leader of the uprising, turning pale when she was accused of being a spy for the government, and a man who aimed a rifle at me, when I asked people to surrender weapons to the government … What drove me mad was the thought about the citizens of Kwangju who became dumbfounded when they realized that they were viewed as rebels.

The woman who owned the house where I was staying became worried and came to me quietly asking me to remain hidden in the room so that I might not be seen by others. She was concerned about the safety of her family. At that time, many people in Seoul seemed to think that people from Kwangju were rebels. I became fearful. So, I moved to the lodging house of a friend of mine and stayed there for a couple of weeks, hoping that Seoul would come to its senses.

For the next several years, the events in Kwangju were buried in the minds of people. I was not able to talk about them, but couldn’t forget them.

Many people judged the citizens of Kwangju as rebels based only on what they heard from the public media. Aren’t we still making wrong judgments based on what others say? Aren’t we blaming Chun and Roh who triggered the trouble in Kwangju and, yet failing to see our own mistakes of having condemned the citizens of Kwangju as rebels? I feel a sense of shame, when I look at the current situation in the Church in connection with the recent exercise of the teaching authority in the Kwangju Archdiocese. History repeats itself.

We know of a few instances of improper exercise of the teaching authority by some bishops (in Korea) who condemned people who participated in the independence movement and resistance campaigns against the Japanese colonial rule as a mob who were violating the teachings and order in the Church.

We also remember the shameful victory by the teaching authority which condemned Galileo Galilei as a heretic, when he insisted that the earth revolved around the sun.

The recent Declaration which was announced with the teaching authority of the Kwangju Archbishop also judged people in Naju as guilty of frauds and plagiarism and those who accept Naju as stupid enough to believe in “preternatural” phenomena. Those who accept this judgment at face value openly criticize and despise those who are connected with Naju.

Catholics think that they love truth and justice. But, when I look at how people are responding to the Declaration, I cannot help thinking that we are also contributing to the repeating history.

Priests and laity abroad are beginning to point out that the contents of the Declaration do not conform to the Church teachings. On the other hand, there are some who deplore such criticisms as being harmful to unity in the Church. Fr. Sun-Song Ri, who is the secretary general of the Naju Investigating Committee and a theology professor at Kwangju Catholic University, wrote that the purpose in exercising the teaching authority is "to promote unity in the community of Church concerning faith and morals." (“Pastoral Care” March 1998 issue, a monthly magazine published by the Korean Bishops’ Council)

However, true unity is possible only when the teaching authority is exercised in harmony with the truth. If the goal is “unity for the sake of unity,” it will run into conflicts and will not help true unity.

The Church gives the faithful the right to make their opinions known to their shepherds and to other members of the Church (Canon Law, Article 212). Obedience to the bishop’s decision must not be a blind one but one that is freely and sincerely consented to through deliberations in the depths of our consciences. If we surrender our free will, which Our Lord gave us, to the clergy, we cannot be true Christians.

Based on such a viewpoint, I would like to comment on several problematic issues in the Declaration as follows.

First, at several places in the Declaration, the Doctrines of the Church were not correctly quoted but were altered and, therefore, impart meanings that were not originally intended.

In the Declaration, it is stated, based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1411), that, because the Eucharist can begin to exist only through the consecration by a validly ordained priest, the claim that the Eucharist miraculously came down from heaven is in conflict with the Church Doctrine.

However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1411) only says that only validly ordained priests can preside at the Eucharist and consecrate the bread and the wine so that they become the Body and Blood of the Lord. It definitely does not say that the Eucharist can begin to exist only through the consecration by priests. What the Catechism says: Only priests can preside at the Eucharist and do the consecration were altered to: The Eucharist can begin to exist only through the consecration by the priests. This altered meaning is not in the Catechism. Besides, the Eucharist is the living Lord. He can come any time, anywhere, and in any manner as He wishes. It is irrational and un-Christian to attempt to restrict the Lord’s Will on the basis of the Church Doctrines.

The Declaration also says that the phenomena involving the Eucharist that Julia received turning into visible flesh and blood are in conflict with the Church teaching that says that the external appearances of bread and wine must remain unchanged even after the transubstantiation into the Body and Blood. Such phenomena only promotes confusion in faith.

The Doctrine that the substances of bread and wine change into the substances of the Lord’s Body and Blood through the Divine Power was defined by the Fourth Lateran Council and was reconfirmed by the Council of Trent. Pope Paul VI also reemphasized this teaching (Mysterium Fidei). As Fr. Sun-Song Ri properly pointed out, however, the Council of Trent did not add a detailed philosophical or theological explanation to this Doctrine.

What we need to focus on is the main teaching of “transubstantiation” in the Doctrine defined by the Lateran Council. The Declaration, however, focuses on a descriptive phrase that the external appearances of bread and wine remain unchanged even after the transubstantiation and, based on this, makes an erroneous conclusion that the changes in the external appearances of the Eucharist into visible flesh and blood are in conflict with the Church teaching. What the Church should do is to explain the significance of such phenomena. But the Declaration is silent about it.

Second, the Declaration does not leave any room for those who have different opinions. The Declaration could achieve its goal of unity more effectively, if it displayed a warm generosity toward those clergy and laity who have different opinions. Instead, it criticized them for being credulous.

If the Archbishop of Kwangju is confident about the contents of his Declaration, he should make known other bishops’ opinions also and explain why he does not agree with them. But the Archbishop is making no such efforts but asking even other bishops who disagree with him to accept his decision. Is this beneficial to the authority and dignity of the Ordinary of the diocese? The Bible says, “We are nothing, if we do not have love.” (I Corinthians 13:2)

Third, in reporting the result of the investigation, the Declaration does not say whether the tears, tears of blood and fragrant oil from the statue of Our Lady and Sacred Hosts from above were true or not. The Declaration was announced in the name of the teaching authority, even though there were no results of the investigation. Some people assert that it was not necessary to announce results of the investigation, because it was clear that the phenomena in Naju were not from God. However, such assertions ignore the fact that the proper role of the investigating committee is to investigate. If those phenomena were not coming from God, the Declaration should have explained where they were coming from.

Fourth, the Declaration first condemned the above-mentioned phenomena as frauds and, then, later stated that they were perhaps by some preternatural power. These are self-contradictory.

Even though there have been some instances of its misuse in the past, the teaching authority has played the essential role in keeping unity in the Church and rejecting heresies. In the Declaration, however, it is exercised in such an irrational, self-conflicting way. This can do harm to the dignity of the teaching authority.

By making the assumption in the Declaration that the phenomena in Naju were perhaps caused by some preternatural power, the Kwangju Archbishop is admitting that he does not really know where these phenomena were coming from. Can he really deprive the faithful of the God-given rights to see, hear and speak and disgrace the dignity of other clergy based on his assumption?

When one decides to restrict others’ rights, he must have clear and sufficient grounds. The late Bishop Daniel Chi of the Wonju Diocese did not assume but clearly stated his position. He wrote down a testimony after witnessing tears of blood flowing down from the Blessed Mother’s eyes in Naju: I clearly saw and firmly believe.

The Declaration even used a secular expression like: Refrain from anything that can give pretexts to anyone to instigate interest in the events in Naju. This can adversely affect the dignity of the Declaration.

The Declaration mentions Dei Verbum (#10) as the ground for its authority: It (the magisterium) teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devoutly, guards it reverently and expounds it faithfully. I wonder if this teaching has been faithfully followed and if doing so would be what is needed for true unity that everyone wants.

People tried to bury Kwangju, but couldn’t. Likewise, if we try to bury Naju, while failing to be faithful to the teachings of the Church, will we succeed? Will people who keep Naju in the depths of their minds and hearts really forget about it? Let us all look for an answer in prayer.

The original Korean text is available from:

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