Many scenes during the 100 hours of Pope Francis’ visit to Korea were pleasant to behold. His constant cherubic smile was something we hadn’t seen for a long time on public occasions. So heartwarming were his tireless kisses on the foreheads of numerous infants raised by their parents, the heart sign he made imitating a young boy at a shelter for the handicapped, his tight grip on the handle of the black leather bag he carried himself, the microscopic signature in a corner of a visitors’ book ... 

And there was the black Kia Soul hatchback he rode in from the airport to downtown Seoul and on most trips during his five-day stay here. A colleague at my church commented, “By Korean Protestant standards, he should travel in a top-class Mercedes or Bentley. Even the late Yu Byeong-eun of the Salvation Sect had two Bentleys in his son’s garage.”

The pope brightened the atmosphere here as much with his personal charm as with all the spiritual and secular messages of love, peace and justice he carried with him, after a particularly bleak time characterized by an extended political impasse, a stagnant economy and worsening left-right, rich-poor, old-young polarization. The pope did much to console the broken souls affected by the Sewol ferry disaster, holding the hands of family members of the victims and personally baptizing one of them.

Korean Protestants joined the Catholics in welcoming Pope Francis, but some in the Reformed Christian community may be alert to possible impacts of the event on their congregations. The Protestants have been on a decline in recent years in Korea while the Catholics are on the rise, and the pope’s apostolic tour could accelerate the trend here, they say in church lobbies.

An official census has put the total number of Catholics in South Korea at 5.4 million or about 11 percent of the entire population, showing a steep rise over the past decade. Analysts attribute this to conversions from Protestant denominations in addition to new adherents. I myself have heard stories of friends’ families “crossing over” to the Catholic Church after trouble developed in their churches. We used to say, “It’s better than just quitting.”

Last Sunday, Pastor Kim Ji-chul of the Somang Presbyterian Church reported during his sermon that he had been asked by a young believer what he thought about conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. Rev. Kim said he was shocked because the questioner seemed to be revealing his own thinking. The pastor spent most of his half-hour sermon explaining the differences between the Reformed Church and Catholicism, including theological problems in Catholic doctrine.

As is well known, the Korean Protestant Church, started in 1884 by American missionaries, grew in leaps and bounds from the 1970s through to the ’80s, the time of societal resistance against authoritarian rule and of rapid economic development. Charismatic preachers built megachurches here and there which boasted tens of thousands of followers. World records were established the biggest congregational and the speed with which it was established.

Decades passed and the time came for the first-generation preachers to retire. Controversies and disputes arose over attempts by retiring pastors to give their churches to their sons. Elders and ordinary members split over supporting or opposing the schemes and new rules were made to allow or prevent the “inheritance” of churches. Losers in these internal disputes brought their cases to the secular court as church tribunals failed to settle them. In the worst cases, churches have been divided.

If the big-name pastors introduced millions to the Christian faith, they are now driving as many away from the church. The media helps magnify the disputes in the public eye as it conveys the claims of opposing sides equally in the name of fairness. The physical growth of churches, in the meantime, led to enormous financial assets with annual budgets of tens of billions of won which allowed them to build fancy glass and steel chapels and purchase condos and luxury cars for clergy.

A week before the arrival of Pope Francis, a group supposedly made up of dissenters from two dominant Presbyterian churches ran large advertisements in the Chosun and Hankyoreh dailies accusing their present pastors of personal and ministerial improprieties. The Church of Love and Myungsung Church immediately issued statements denying each of the allegations, but only after the accusers created doubts about the integrity of those church leaders.

In contrast to the single organizational structure of the Catholic Church, the Protestant churches in Korea have too many denominations, which have branched out due to theological differences and simple power contests. The Presbyterian Church in Korea alone has as many as 60 independent “General Assemblies,” which control 20,000 individual churches, large, small and hardly surviving.

These various denominations have formed associations, the largest of which was called “Hangichong.” A couple of years ago, this Hangichong was involved in a vote-buying scandal over the election of its president, and many influential members left it to form a new body, called “Hangyoyeon.” The Blue House has to invite the heads of both organizations when it holds a meeting of religious leaders to hear their advice on current issues.

Some have compared the ill influences of those megachurches and their authoritarian pastors on Korean Christianity to the annoying radical activities of some extremist Catholic priests who interfere with various political and social issues, including major public infrastructure projects. If you want to know which side has had a more negative impact on the evangelical point of view, you may check the demographics of the two lines of Christianity here over the years.

Pope Francis has returned to Vatican City, leaving in his wake calls for compassion for the underprivileged and tolerance and harmony between opposing forces and interests. His warm, innocent smile will long be kept in our memories, in the Catholic and Protestant communities and the rest of Korean society, which all have been in need of the kind of leadership that the pope exhibited here wholeheartedly through his words and acts.

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He is an elder at the Somang Presbyterian Church in Seoul. ― Ed.