Cardinal Marengo: Church in Mongolia will treasure Pope's visit

By Lisa Zengarini

As Mongolia prepares to welcome Pope Francis early in September, the Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, says the visit is an historic event that the young Mongolian Church will treasure.

The Pope is expected to travel to Mongolia marking his 43th Apostolic Journey abroad from 31 August (date of departure from Rome) to 4 September.

He was invited to visit the country on August 24, 2022, when a delegation from the Mongolian government visited the Vatican and handed him an official invitation from the Mongolian President, Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh.

A young Church

Presenting the official programme, motto and logo of the papal journey on Friday, the Italian Consolata missionary said the visit would have been “unthinkable” only a few months ago.

Pope Francis will be the first-ever Pope to visit the Buddhist nation where the Church started from nothing in 1992, following the fall the Communist regime.

In that year the first Catholic missionaries of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM), also known as Scheut Missionaries, returned to rebuild the Church after nearly seventy years of religious repression.

Since then, the Catholic population has grown slowly, but steadily. Today there are some 1,450 baptized Mongolian Catholics (as against only 14 in 1995) distributed in nine parishes, on a total population of some three and a half million inhabitants. They are served by 29 priests, including two Mongolians, over 40 women religious and three men religious belonging to a dozen congregations and of 27 different nationalities,  and three lay missionaries.

Pope St. John Paul II’s plans to visit Mongolia in 2003

During the press conference in Ulannbataar - reported Fides news agency - Cardinal Marengo recalled that Pope Saint John Paul II had already planned to visit Mongolia in 2003, after elevating the then Mission of Ulaanbaatar to the status of Apostolic Prefecture a year earlier, but the plan was cancelled due to his worsening health conditions.

"And now here we are”, he said “20 years later, and about 800 years after the first direct contact between the Holy See and the Mongol emperors, when Pope Innocent IV sent his envoy, the Franciscan Giovanni di Pian del Carpine to personally meet the famous Mongols and start a peaceful dialogue."

Remembering late Bishop Wenceslao Padilla

The 49-year-old Cardinal, who first arrived in Mongolia in 2003, also recalled his predecessor, late Bishop Wenceslao Padilla, the first pioneer priest leading the CICM missionaries in 1992, and the first Apostolic Prefect of Ulan Bataar: "We are yielding the fruits of his great missionary work and of many other missionaries,  and we are preparing - also in their name - for this historic event", he said.

Illustrating the meaning of the logo and the motto of papal journey, "Hoping Together", Cardinal Marengo focused on the implications of the papal journey for interreligious dialogue in the country.

The importance of the visit for interreligious relations in Mongolia

Relations with other Mongolian faith communities, and in particular with the local the Buddhist religious authorities, are good and rooted in the ancient tradition of tolerance and openness dating back to Emperor Chinggis Khaan. This was confirmed during the first official visit to the Vatican of a high-level delegation of Buddhist monks from Mongolia on May 28 ,2022, when they met Pope Francis.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1990, also relations with the civil authorities have continued to grow stronger, as indicates the agreement signed in 2020 by the Mongolian Ambassador to the Holy See and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Vatican Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations to extend their collaboration in the cultural field.

The Church’s social work in Mongolia

Mongolian authorities have shown a particular appreciation for the social work carried out by the Church in the country for the poorest and most vulnerable.

On 4 September, the last day of his Apostolic Journey, Pope Francis is scheduled to meet local Church charity workers and will inaugurate the House of Mercy a charity a charity facility including a clinic designed to respond to the immediate needs of homeless people and victims of domestic violence.

According to the Apostolic Prefecture, the centre “represents one of the first major projects launched by the native Catholic Church in a country where missionary works have supported the faith". There is no doubt, remarked Cardinal Marengo, that the  Church in Mongolia will be able to treasure the experience of welcoming the Successor of Peter, "growing in that genuine sense of being a single body, well rooted in the country".