Stephen (often rendered as Latin Stephanus) Kim Sou-hwan (Korean: 김수환; Hanja: 金壽煥; May 8, 1922 – February 16, 2009) was a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and the former archbishop of Seoul, South Korea. Having been an iconic figure in South Korea's bloody and tumultuous transition from military rule to democracy, he was widely respected across all sections in South Korean society.
Early years
He was born in Daegu, modern-day South Korea, and attended high school in Seoul. He studied philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo from 1941 to 1944, and at Catholic University of Korea in Seoul from 1947 to 1951, when he graduated. After serving briefly as a parish priest in Andong and then as a secretary in the Archdiocese of Daegu, he traveled to Germany to study sociology at Münster University from 1956 to 1963.
During Park Chung Hee and his successor's military dictatorship of the '70s and the '80s, the Korean Catholic Church under Kim's leadership was highlighted as a focal point of South Korea's democratization movement.
In 1998, Cardinal Kim retired as the archbishop of Seoul, shortly after serving as president-delegate of the Special Assembly for Asia of the World Synod of Bishops. On the death of Franz Koenig in 2004, he became the senior member of the college in terms of service, as he was the first of the three surviving members elevated in 1969 on the list of that consistory. However, Kim was ill at the time, and in the ceremonies of the sede vacante on the death of Pope John Paul II, the duties of protopresbyter (senior cardinal priest) were instead carried out by Eugenio de Araujo Sales, another 1969 cardinal who was Kim's junior as cardinal but senior as a priest and as a bishop.
Having reached the age of 80 in 2002, he did not participate in the ensuing conclave as he was no longer eligible to vote in papal elections. Cardinal Kim did arrive for the papal inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI and there he did discharge the duties of the cardinal protopresbyter.
Death
From 2007, Kim's health gradually deteriorated, and he was seldom seen in public, the last time being the 2008 Christmas Midnight Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral. He died in Seoul on February 16, 2009, from respiratory problems. During a four-day lying in state period some 400,000 Catholic mourners were said[according to whom?] to have filed past his coffin in the city's Myeongdong Cathedral. He was buried on February 20. As per his will, he donated his organs, and the Cardinal's eyes were quickly used in two successful cornea transplants.
