Mongolia is a buffer state between Russia and China and is one of the few countries in the world that maintains continuous relations with both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan.
"Pope Francis, accepting the invitation of the President of Mongolia and the country's ecclesiastical authorities, will pay an apostolic visit to Mongolia this year between August 31 and September 4," announced Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, on June 3, 2023. This will be the 43rd apostolic journey of the Argentine pope and the first papal trip to this country, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Catholic presence in 2022.
Mongolia has a small Catholic community of about 1,400 baptized members in this Buddhist-cultured country of about three million people living in an area of 1.5 million km2, three times the size of France.
Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar, who became the youngest member of the College of Cardinals on August 27, 2022, explained to IMedia 2022 that his appointment as a cardinal highlighted the actual experience of being in a minority, but in a society that is large developed a capacity for dialogue. Cardinal Marengo, who was received by the Pope along with an interfaith delegation a few days earlier, emphasized that
"Mongolia is a country that throughout its history has always known how to promote peace and harmony among peoples of different origins."
The return of the missionaries in 1992
After the extinction of Nestorian Christianity, which spread in Central Asia in the first millennium, the first Catholic missionaries arrived in the religious environment dominated by Tibetan Buddhism only in 1992, at the beginning of the democratic opening of the country. II was very interested in the appearance of this church. Pope János Pál, who wanted to visit the country for the consecration of the cathedral in Ulaanbaatar in 2003, but the travel plan could never be realized due to the health condition of the Polish pope.
Pope Francis' trip, his visit to Kazakhstan in September 2022, and his numerous visits to countries close to China (South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Burma, Thailand, etc.) also fit into the broader geopolitical context.
Mongolia is a buffer state between Russia and China and is one of the few countries in the world that maintains continuous relations with both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan.
In fact, Mongolia's independence was officially recognized by the Republic of China in 1945, during the regime of Chiang Kai-shek, and this achievement was not questioned even by Mao, who came to power in Beijing in 1949.
Mongolia can therefore provide a forum for negotiations related to the Taiwan issue and inter-Korean tensions: in 2022, Mongolian President Hürelszuh Uhnágyn - after receiving the South Korean foreign minister - invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to make an official visit to Ulaanbaatar again.
First papal visit
Pope Francis' 43rd Apostolic Journey comes just over three weeks after his return from the World Youth Meeting (WYD) in Lisbon, which will be his second apostolic visit to Portugal, six years after his 2017 visit to mark the centenary of the Fatima apparitions.
Under the current papacy, Mongolia will become the seventh country to host a papal visit for the first time (following Burma in 2017, the United Arab Emirates and North Macedonia in 2019, Iraq in 2021, Bahrain in 2022 and South Sudan in 2023). According to the director of the Szentszéki Press Office, the program and further details will be announced in the coming weeks.
Translated by: Zoltán Bárdi
Source: Aleteia / katolikus.ma
