A letter written by Columban Missionary, Bishop Thomas Quinlan, dating from 12th August 1968 was recently unearthed by the Columbans in Britain. Writing from Korea, Bishop Quinlan reminisces about being one of the first fourteen Columbans to go to China in 1920. He also expresses great hopes for the future. To give readers a sense of who Bishop Quinlan was, Fr Donal O’Keeffe recalls his life and mission.
Ninety years ago in 1934, Tom Quinlan was on his first home vacation from China where he had worked since his ordination in 1920. In China he had encountered famines, floods, wars and he had been the main builder of churches for the Columbans. With that experience he was asked to join first group of Columban missionaries assigned to Korea.
Tom Quinlan was a natural leader in the group and in 1939 was charged with the overall responsibility for an area which later became the Korean diocese of Chuncheon.
Korea at this time had been annexed by Japan and the Japanese authorities made life very difficult for the missionaries. With the surrender of Japan in August 1945 at the end of World War II Korea became independent but the country was de facto divided with the US overseeing the Southern part of Korea and Russia overseeing the Northern part.
Tensions erupted between both sides leading to the outbreak of the Korean War. Tom Quinlan was offered a chance to flee but he refused stating that his place was to stay with the people to whom he was ministering.
Taken prisoner in June 1950 he suffered the infamous ‘Death march’ when he and some 900 prisoners were force marched in winter to a prisoner of war camp in the North of Korea.
The first Columbans to go to China. Front Row: Michael McHugh, Edward J Galvin, John Blowick, John Dawson. Second Row: Thomas Quinlan, Owen MacPolin, Richard Ranaghan, Edward J O’Doherty, John P. O’Brien, Cornelius Tierney, Timothy Leonard, Matthew Dolan. Rear: Joseph Crossan, Alphonsus Ferguson, Arthur McGuinness, William O’Flynn, Michael Mee.
Over 100 died during that march – many from the cold and many others were shot because they were too weak to walk. He remained in the prison camp until April 1953. During that time Tom looked after the sick and helped bury the dead.
On his release a fellow prisoner, the British War correspondent Philip Deane, wrote of Quinlan: “He was our banner, and in a group of remarkably selfless heroic people – the missionaries of Korea – Thomas Quinlan was, without trying, the most remarkable. To meet him it was worth being interned.”
He returned to Korea in 1954 and the following year he was ordained as Bishop of Chuncheon in Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul. Korea in the 1950s was trying to recover from the destruction of a war which had left some two million Koreans dead, hundreds of thousands hungry, thousands of orphans, while the infrastructure was almost totally destroyed. Tom Quinlan devoted himself and the resources of the diocese to rebuilding the lives of the people.
A Japanese propaganda photograph of priests of the Prefecture of Ch’unch’on interned in 1942. Front row: Brian Geraghty, Thomas Quinlan, Pat Brennan. Second row: James Maginn, Frank McGann, Tony Collier (giving the victory sign). Third row: Pat McGowan, Phil Crosbie, Tom Neligan. Fourth Row: Paddy Deery, Frank Herlihy, James Doyle, Frank Gallagher, Hubert Hayward.
He invited in religious congregations to join in the work. The Columban Sisters and the Little Company of Mary built medical clinics, the Sacred Heart Sisters built a college for women. All over the diocese Columbans were building churches, starting credit unions, establishing night schools and orphanages, supporting school children by providing fees.
The bishop also built three churches in honour of the Columbans who were executed during the Korean War. Today these men are candidates for beatification and the memorial churches are martyr shrines attracting pilgrims from all over Korea.
Bishop Quinlan resigned as bishop in 1966 and chose to stay in Korea – his motto was ‘labour until evening falls’. He became chaplain to the Columban Sisters in their clinic in Samcheok where he died on 31 December 1970. He is buried behind the cathedral in Chuncheon.
Earlier that year he received the gift of a chalice inscribed by Pope Paul VI on the occasion of his golden Jubilee as a priest. Always thinking of the future, he sent it to the Dalgan seminary expressing the hope that it would inspire students preparing to be missionaries. Today that same chalice is used in the chapel of the Columban Formation House in Seoul where Korean candidates are preparing to follow the steps of Tom Quinlan as Columban Missionaries.
Fr Donal O’Keeffe is from Bantry, Co Cork. He was ordained in 1975 and arrived in Korea in 1976. In 2021 he was honoured by the Korean State as ‘Immigrant of the Year’ in recognition of his 40 years of dedication to supporting the marginalised in Korean society.
First published in the November 2024 edition of the Far East magazine. To subscribe and support Columban Missionaries see: https://columbans.ie/far-east-magazine/
