tvc.dsj.org | April 16, 2019
COMMUNITY
5
New Pastor Installed in Holy Korean Martyrs Catholic Church
Holy Korean Martyrs Catholic
Church (HKMCC) parishioners cel-
ebrated Mass of Installation of Father
Stefano Taehoon Ko as their new pas-
tor on March 3. The Mass was presided
over by Coadjutor Bishop Oscar Cantú.
Father.Stefano Taehoon Ko belongs to
the Diocese of Suwon in Korea, and he
was sent to serve as the 11th Pastor in
the history of HKMCC.
This Korean Catholic community in
San Jose was initially formed with 22
faithful families yearning to worship
God in their native tongue, at Saint Law-
rence in Santa Clara. As the community
grew gradually, the place worship was
moved to Archbishop Mitty High
School Chapel, and then to Queen of
Apostles Parish. In 1993, the community
was able to establish its own church in
a remodeled storage building in Sunny-
vale and it was named Saints, Andrew
After the Rite of Installation Mass, Coadjutor Bishop Oscar Cantú and Father Stefano
Taehoon Ko posed with the special guests in Holy Korean Martyrs Catholic Church.
and Paul Korean Catholic Mission.
In 2005, the community was recog-
nized as a parish in Diocese of San Jose
with the new name of Holy Korean
Martyrs Parish in remembrance of the
blood shed by Korean Martyrs sow-
ing the seeds of faith in God. Soon the
community again had to relocate to
accommodate the needs of a rapidly
growing number of parishioners. With
the guidance of Bishop McGrath, the
community now resides in the current
church in San Jose, serving 1200 active
parishioners. HKMCC is thought to be
one of the largest Korean Catholic com-
munities outside of Korea.
Young Adults and Religion
By Lauren Loftus
Young adults are much less likely
than earlier generations to consider
themselves “religious.” According to
the Pew Research Center, 43 percent
of people in the U.S. under age 40 say
religion is “very important” to them,
compared to 60 percent of adults over 40.
To Elizabeth Drescher, adjunct associ-
ate professor of religious studies at Santa
Clara University, that doesn’t mean her
students are uninterested in engaging
the spiritual and sacred.
Over the past two years, her students
have become novice field researchers in
the local spiritual landscape. They physi-
cally visit sites of spiritual significance-
from Presbyterian churches and Sikh
gurdwaras to Santa Cruz beaches where
locals practice yoga-and document their
observations and experiences via a geo-
mapping application, Encounter, devel-
oped by Drescher and religious studies
adjunct lecturer Jaime Wright, with the
support of Living Religion Collaborative
student fellows Connor Holttum (‘18),
Nick Nagy (‘19), Claire Dixon (‘19), and
Casey Xuerub (‘19).
We chatted with Drescher about the
significance of mapping religion and
spirituality in Northern California.
What first motivated you to document
and plot religious and spiritual spaces
with your students?
I got interested in finding ways to
teach religion that move beyond text. My
focus is on how ordinary people “do’”
religion-how we make it, how we use
it in our everyday, ordinary lives. That
involves looking at things like religious
spaces and taking seriously students’
perspectives on their own religious and
spiritual experiences, observations, and
reflections.
And that then developed into the
Encounter geomap?
Yes. My colleague Jaime Wright and
I have a 2018-2019 teaching and tech-
nology grant that supports continuing
development of the project. Encounter
is a story-mapping platform that visually
and geospatially tracks students’ experi-
ences in formal and informal religious
and spiritual spaces, mapping where
they’ve been as well as the stories that
define those spaces as sacred. It can be
viewed at: https://www.scu.edu/livin-
greligions/encounter-mapping-religion/
Why is the mapping element-literally
plotting points on a digital map of the
Bay Area-important?
We want students to tell the story
of how religion and spirituality exist
in and around the university and local
communities. Encounter allows us to see
young adults’ perspectives on religion as
it shapes and is shaped by landscapes
they’re exploring.
What is the value of a tool like En-
counter?
We also want Encounter to allow
people from outside the university
to see how young people experience
religion locally. This is way more valu-
able than, say, a Yelp map of “here are a
bunch of spiritual places and reviews.”
It’s really a tableau of experiences that
young people are both observing and
participating in.
How has this project informed your
study of the religiously unaffiliated,
AKA “nones,” a demographic that in-
cludes more and more young people?
There’s this idea that religion and
spirituality are dying. I don’t think that’s
exactly what’s happening. I think we’re
in a moment where religion and spiri-
The HKMCC is greatly indebted to
the Diocese of Suwon and Caritas Sis-
ters of Jesus sending priests and sisters
to meet the pastoral needs, to grow
into a mature Catholic community.
The HMKCC is deeply grateful to the
leadership of Diocese of San Jose for
having provided Sunday Mass to the
2nd generation English speaking youth
and young adults.
Currently Father Joseph Youngsam
Kim from Diocese of Suwon leads the
youth ministry with help from the di-
ocesan priests: Father Steve Kim, Father
Gabriel Lee, and Father Ritche Bueza.
The HKMCC will continue to meet the
new challenge of generation gaps and
language barriers within the Korean
ethnic culture, searching for a creative
way to unite the community keeping
faith, hope, and love, steadfast in the
Lord our God, Jesus Christ.
tuality are being redefined and, impor-
tantly, young adults are really central to
that redefining. So understanding how
they experience and perceive real spaces
in which spirituality unfolds is critical.