The Pope will visit a small Catholic group in Mongolia

Mongolian Catholics – a total of 1,450 people – could be crammed into St. Peter’s Basilica dozens of times, and their numbers are smaller than the congregation of a small parish in some small towns.

So why would Pope Francis, 86, who needs a wheelchair, travel 8,278 kilometers to visit them this week?

Essentially paraphrasing British climber George Mallory’s response in the 1920s as to why he wanted to climb Everest, because there are Catholics there.

“I can’t even imagine it,” said Arvanai Hashdorj, 19, a student who attended Sunday mass at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator.

Visiting places where Catholics are in the minority is part of Francis’ policy of drawing attention to the people and problems of what he called the peripheries of society and the world. He has yet to visit most of the capitals of Western Europe.

Francis, who will be attending an interfaith service in Mongolia, said in his weekly Sunday noon address that he will visit “a church small in number but lively in faith.”

Last year, Francis appointed Italian archbishop Giorgio Marengo as the first cardinal to reside in Mongolia, where he is administrator of the Catholic Church.

“This shows how important every faithful is to him (the pope),” said Marengo, a missionary in Mongolia for more than 20 years.

Mongolia has nine parishes, against 25,500 in Italy. The smallest of them, hundreds of kilometers from the capital, has only between 30 and 40 members.

Francis said on Sunday he was honored to visit “a noble and wise people” with a “great religious tradition”.

About 60% of Mongols identify as religious. Of these, according to the US State Department, 87.1% are Buddhists, 5.4% Muslims, 4.2% Shamanists, 2.2% Christians and 1.1% followers of other religions .

There are only two native Mongolian Catholic priests.

The country of about 3.3 million inhabitants is strategically significant for the Roman Catholic Church due to its proximity to China, where the Vatican is trying to improve the situation of Catholics in a sometimes tense relationship with the communist government.

Source: Terra

Rose

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