VATICAN CITY (CNS) — As prefect of the Vatican office tasked with overseeing and supporting the world’s priests and permanent deacons, Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik has brought his unique experience in formation and evangelization from South Korea to the universal church.
The 73-year-old cardinal was the first Korean and second Asian appointed by Pope Francis to lead a Vatican dicastery when he made him prefect of what is now the Dicastery for Clergy in 2021.
“We all need this light that comes from the East” where so many welcomed Jesus with enthusiasm despite many sufferings, the late pope said in a preface to the cardinal’s autobiography, “Come la Folgore Viene da Oriente” (“Like the Thunderbolt from the East”) in 2023.
Leading the dicastery means most of the world’s bishops, cardinals and priests have been aware of his work and approach through “ad limina” visits to Rome, the dicastery’s 2024 plenary assembly, Vatican conferences and various letters and resources sent directly to dioceses.
When he received his appointment to the Vatican, Pope Francis told him the Vatican needed a smiling person, capable of creating communion with others, the cardinal said, according to AsiaNews.
The affable cardinal is known for being humble, full of life and, as one source told Catholic News Service, very “efficient” in his role.
“For me, being a priest and a bishop means walking together with others,” loving them and listening attentively, he said at the official opening of the synodal journey at the Vatican in 2021.
“In this way the priest is ‘a father’ of the community, ‘a man’ beside his brothers and sisters who are walking toward the kingdom of God, ‘a companion’ who makes himself one with people in difficulty,” he said.
“Vocation is essentially the call to be happy, to take charge of one’s life, to realize it fully and not waste it,” the cardinal told the Vatican newspaper ahead of the 2024 World Day of Prayer for Vocations.
Because he has devoted so much of his life to priestly formation, he said he knows that in many parts of the world many priests are experiencing hardships, trials, exhaustion and, especially, profound loneliness.
“There is a need for a new mentality and new formation paths because often a priest is educated to be a solitary leader, a ‘one man in charge,’ and this is not good for him,” he told the newspaper.
The answer is synodality and mutual care, he said. “We are small and full of limitations, but we are disciples of the Master. Moved by him we can do many things. Not individually, but together, synodally.”
Cardinal You has long supported the synodal process, launching a three-year process in his own diocese in 2015.
Their synodal journey “boosted the commitment of local Catholics to the mission of proclaiming the Gospel,” he told AsiaNews in 2020, and it increased the number of Catholics regularly attending services to about 25% — about 5% higher than the national average.
At the official launch in 2021 of the synod on synodality process, Cardinal You said he was the first Christian in his nonreligious family. He became a Catholic at 16 after attending a Catholic middle and high school named after St. Andrew Kim Taegon, South Korea’s first native-born Catholic priest and martyr whose life attracted him to the faith. A third of Korea’s martyrs came from the cardinal’s home diocese of Daejeon, he told Vatican Insider in 2014.
At his baptism on Christmas Eve, he took the name Lazarus; he told the Vatican newspaper in 2023 that “I am Lazarus,” a friend of Jesus, reborn and saved.
After three years of seminary, he served 32 months of mandatory military service close to the border with North Korea.
“In this harsh environment, I discovered that love conquers all. I experienced the power of witness: little by little hundreds of my companions got baptized,” he said in his testimony at the synodal journey’s 2021 opening. He said in his autobiography that people were always curious about and desired the same joy and courage he consistently displayed.
An active proponent of prayer, dialogue and concrete efforts for peace and reconciliation on the peninsula, Cardinal You was head of the committee for peace of the Korean bishops’ conference, and he visited North Korea four times.
The “‘demilitarized zone’ between the South and the North is ironically the most militarized zone in the world,” he told Fides, a Vatican news agency, in 2021. “The confrontation that exists on the Korean Peninsula is one of the greatest sufferings of humanity today,” he said.
The cardinal also has been an active participant in the Focolare movement, particularly its meetings for bishops. In 2004 he told Fides, “The Focolare spirituality helps me to live communion with other bishops and as a college around the Holy Father. It is always an experience of deep joy sharing and prayer.”
Born Nov. 17, 1951, in Nonsan, Cardinal You studied in Seoul and in Rome, where he received his doctorate in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Lateran University.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1979 and served in a variety of positions in the Diocese of Daejeon, including spiritual director, professor and finally president of the Catholic University of Daejeon. He was named coadjutor bishop of Daejeon in 2003 and became head of the diocese in 2005.
Pope Francis made him a cardinal in 2022.
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