SEOUL, South Korea -- Hundreds of thousands of people turned out today for one of the highlights of Pope Francis' trip to South Korea: The beatification of 124 Koreans killed for their faith more than two centuries ago.
The streets leading up to Seoul's iconic Gwanghwamun Gate were packed with Koreans honoring the lay Catholics who founded the church on the peninsula in the 18th century.
Korea's church is unique in that it was founded not by missionaries or priests who took the faith to the peninsula and converted people -- as occurred in most of the world -- but by members of Korea's own noble classes who learned of Christianity by reading books about it.
These early Catholics were killed in the 18th and 19th centuries by the Joseon Dynasty, which tried to shut the Korean Peninsula off from Western influence.
A collective cheer rose from the masses when Francis declared the 124 "blessed" -- the first step toward possible sainthood.
Thousands of people were neatly packed into fenced-in sections leading away from the altar, which was set up in front of Gwanghwamun, the south gate to Gyeongbokgung palace, with Inwang mountain looming above and the presidential Blue House on its lower slopes.
Police in green vests stood guard along the barricades, and volunteers handed out water to guard against the warm, humid weather.
Police declined to give an estimate of the crowd size, but local media reported it had topped 1 million. Catholics represent about 10 percent of South Korea's 50 million people.
"I'm so thankful that the pope visited South Korea," said Yu Pil-sang, 75, a Catholic who was trying to get a glimpse of the pope just outside the police barricade. "But I'm so sorry that all the ways to see the pope are blocked. I came to hear at least his voice."
In his homily, Francis said the lessons of the martyrs are relevant today for Korea's church, which is small but growing and is seen as a model for the rest of the world.
"They were willing to make great sacrifices and let themselves be stripped of whatever kept them from Christ -- possessions and land, prestige and honor -- for they knew that Christ alone was their true treasure," he said. "They challenge us to think about what, if anything, we ourselves would be willing to die for."
He praised in particular the fact that ordinary lay people were so crucial to the church's foundation and growth in Korea.
He was expected to meet later in the day with leaders of lay movements. The church is counting on such laymen and women to spread the faith in Asia, which the Vatican considers the future of the church.
En route to the altar before Mass, Francis stopped his open-topped car so he could get out and bless a group of families that lost loved ones in a ferry sinking in April, in which more than 300 people, most of them high school students, were killed.
On his white cassock, Francis wore a yellow ribbon given to him by the families a day earlier when he met with them privately to try to console them.
"We want the truth," read a yellow banner, a reference to the families' demands for an independent inquiry into the sinking. Officials said 400 families had been invited to the Mass.
The main figure in the group that was beatified is Paul Yun Ji-Chung, who was born in 1759 and was among the earliest Catholics on the peninsula. He was beheaded in 1791 -- the first Korean martyr -- after he violated the traditional Confucian funeral rites for his mother. In all, the Joseon Dynasty killed about 10,000 Catholics for refusing to renounce their faith.
Historians say Korea's early believers were struck by the idea of a religion that preached universal equality in divine eyes at a time when the nobility's discriminatory hierarchical system brutally exploited ordinary people.
Pope John Paul II canonized another 103 martyrs during a visit to South Korea in 1984.
Francis began his day by praying at a monument in Seoul commemorating the martyrs on the site where many of them were killed.
He was supposed to have baptized the father of one of the ferry victims who asked Francis to perform the sacrament. But a spokesman for the organizing committee of the trip, the Rev. Mattias Hur Young-yup, said the baptism would take place Sunday.
Francis arrived in Seoul on Thursday for a five-day visit. On Friday, he delivered his first public Mass in Asia, calling for South Korean Catholics to combat the allure of materialism.
During his homily, Francis urged the faithful to reject "inhuman" economic policies that disenfranchise the poor and "the spirit of unbridled competition which generates selfishness and strife."
It's a theme he has raised frequently during his pontificate, speaking against the "idolatry of money" and the excesses of capitalism that leave the poorest even further on the margins of society.
Francis stressed his message again later Friday during a meeting with some 6,000 young Catholics from 23 nations gathered in the sanctuary town of Solmoe, where Korea's first Catholic priest was born.
"We see signs of an idolatry of wealth, power and pleasure, which come at a high cost to human lives," he said.
Many South Koreans, however, are proud of the national doggedness that has lifted the country from the destruction of the Korean War in the 1950s into Asia's fourth-biggest economy.
Meanwhile, Chinese Catholics on Friday cheered the visit to the region, saying they hoped it would help end the estrangement between Beijing and the Vatican.
The Vatican sent a telegram from Francis' chartered Alitalia plane as it entered Chinese airspace early Thursday, following Vatican protocol that calls for the pope to send such greetings whenever he flies over a foreign country.
Such telegrams usually go unnoticed.
But the gesture took on unique significance because the Vatican and China have no diplomatic relations -- and therefore no official contacts -- and because Beijing had refused to let John Paul II fly through its airspace when he made a second visit to South Korea, in 1989.
But the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said Friday that it appeared the telegram never arrived. The Chinese Embassy to Italy asked the Holy See for a copy of the telegram, saying it hadn't received it.
A copy was immediately provided to the embassy, he said.
Despite the glitch, China's Foreign Ministry responded to reports of the telegram with a statement saying it remained committed to establishing a "constructive dialogue" and improving ties.
Information for this article was contributed by Foster Klug, Youkyung Lee and Christopher Bodeen of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/16/2014