why did the pope visit mongolia

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Pope arrives on first visit to Mongolia as Vatican relations with Russia and China remain strained

Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday on a visit to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. (Sep. 1) (AP/video by Saruul Enkhbold) Associated Press religion coverage is supported by The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday on a visit to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the landlocked Asian country and it comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (Sept. 1) (AP video/Wayne Zhang) __ Associated Press religion coverage is supported by The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Mongolia prepares for Pope Francis’ visit to one of world’s tiniest and newest Catholic communities. (Aug. 31)(AP video/Wayne Zhang)

Pope Francis is greeted by Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, left, Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar, and faithful gathered outside the Apostolic Prefecture in Ulaanbaatar’s Kahn Uul district, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)

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Pope Francis picks up a piece of Aaruul or Mongolian curd cheese as he arrives at Ulaanbaatar’s International airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis is received by the Foreign Minister of Mongolia, Batmunkh Battsetseg, right, as he arrives at Ulaanbaatar’s International airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis is received by the Foreign Minister of Mongolia, Batmunkh Battsetseg, right, as he arrives at Ulaanbaatar’s International airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Pope Francis is received by the Foreign Minister of Mongolia, Batmunkh Battsetseg, rightas he arrives at Ulaanbaatar’s International airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Pope Francis arrives at Ulaanbaatar’s International airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

People walk by a newly weds preparing for their wedding photos taken near the Dongjiaominxiang Catholic Church in Beijing, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday morning on a visit to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

The plane carrying Pope Francis lands at Ulaanbaatar’s International airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

The Mongolian honor guard lines up at Ulaanbaatar’s International Airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

The Mongolian honor guard lines up the Ulaanbaatar’s International airport Chinggis Khaan, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Pope Francis, left, is flanked by his spokeperson Matteo Bruni as he talks with journalist on their flight to Mongolia, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. Francis will be the first pope to visit Mongolia. (AP Photo/Alberto Pizzoli, pool)

Children run past a mural featuring Pope Francis outside Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Cathedral in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. Pope Francis is travelling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)

Pope Francis is greeted by children in traditional Mongolian costumes outside the Apostolic Prefecture in Ulaanbaatar’s Kahn Uul district, Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. Pope Francis is traveling to Mongolia to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday morning to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities.

It’s the first time a pope has visited the landlocked Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained.

Francis arrived in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar after an overnight flight passing through Chinese airspace, affording the pontiff a rare opportunity to send a note of greetings to President Xi Jinping . Vatican protocol calls for the pope to send such greetings whenever he flies over a foreign country.

In his message to Xi, Francis expressed “greetings of good wishes to your excellency and the people of China.”

“Assuring you of my prayers for the wellbeing of the nation, I invoke upon all of you the divine blessings of unity and peace,” Francis said.

Despite strains in the relationship, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the greeting showed “friendliness and goodwill.”

“China is willing to continue to walk in the same direction with the Vatican, conduct constructive dialogues, enhance understanding, accumulate mutual trust, and promote the process of improving the relationship of the two sides,” Wang said at a daily briefing.

Upon arrival, Francis, who uses a wheelchair, was met on the tarmac by helmeted honor guards along with Mongolia’s foreign minister and was offered a taste of dried yoghurt from a woman in traditional dress, in a sign of welcome. He made no public comments. Along with priests and others gathered on the tarmac, several dozen watched his arrival from the airport terminal.

Speaking to reporters en route to Mongolia late Thursday, Francis said he was looking forward to visiting a country that has just a few people, but with a culture that you need your senses to understand.

“There are only a few inhabitants — a small people, but a big culture,” he said aboard the ITA charter plane. “I think it will do us good to try to understand this long, big silence, understand what it means but not intellectually, but with senses.” He added: “Mongolia, you understand with your senses.”

On tap are official meetings with the Mongolian president and prime minister and a speech before Mongolian government, cultural and business leaders, followed by Francis’ first encounter with the bishops, priests and nuns who form the backbone of a tiny Catholic community of 1,450 that has only been in existence for a generation.

While Christianity has been present in the region for hundreds of years , the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence in Mongolia since 1992, after the country shrugged off its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution.

The Holy See and Mongolia have had diplomatic relations ever since, and a handful of missionary religious orders including Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity have nurtured the tiny community through its first three decades of life.

Four Missionaries of Charity sisters — Jeanne Francoise from Rwanda; Chanmi from South Korea; Viera from Slovakia and Suder from India — run a nursing home on the northern outskirts of Ulaanbaatar with a capacity of 30 beds. There, they provide care for elderly people with mental or physical disabilities, or who are homeless, undocumented, or otherwise ostracized by their families.

Sister Jeanne Francoise said it was an honor that Francis was coming to Mongolia, saying she had seen him once before when she was living in Rome but that it was never as “close” as it would be in Mongolia.

Francis has long praised the work of missionaries and has tried to reinvigorate the missionary focus of the church at large by visiting them and encouraging their work. One of his first events in Mongolia is to preside over an encounter with missionaries Saturday afternoon at the capital’s St. Peter and Paul cathedral, and he ends his visit by inaugurating a new church-run charity house to tend to Mongolia’s poorest.

“I want people to know that the Catholic religion, the Catholic Church, and Catholic believers also exist in Mongolia,” the Rev. Sanjaajav Tserenkhand, a Mongolian priest, said outside the cathedral. He said he hoped that Francis’ visit would also show Mongolians that Christianity isn’t a “foreign religion,” but is also rooted in the country.

The Argentine pontiff has long prioritized visiting Catholic communities in what he calls the peripheries, staying away from the global centers of Catholicism to minister instead to small churches where Catholics are often a minority. He has made cardinals out of their leaders to show the universal reach of the 1.3-billion strong Catholic Church, including the head of the Mongolian church, Cardinal Giorgio Marengo.

“His heart burns with love for the universal church, and especially the church where she lives in a minority context,” Marengo told journalists during a recent visit to Rome . “And that is the wonderful meaning of his coming all the way to Mongolia.”

The other main focus of Francis’ four-day visit is to highlight Mongolia’s long tradition of interfaith coexistence. The Mongol Empire under its famed founder Genghis Khan was known for tolerating people of different faiths among those it conquered, and Francis will likely emphasize that tradition when he presides over an interfaith meeting Sunday.

Invited are Mongolian Buddhists, who are the majority in the nation of 3.3 million, as well as Jewish, Muslim and Shinto representatives and members of Christian churches that have established a presence in Mongolia in the last 30 years, including the Russian Orthodox Church.

That encounter could enable Francis to once again offer greetings to the Moscow patriarchate, which has strongly supported the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Francis has tried to steer a diplomatic tightrope in not antagonizing Moscow, consistent with the Vatican’s tradition of diplomatic neutrality in conflicts.

Days before his visit, he sparked outrage in Ukraine over his praise of Russia’s imperial past, comments that the Vatican insisted were by no means an endorsement of Moscow’s current war of aggression in Ukraine.

While the Vatican has insisted Francis is going to Mongolia — not China or Russia — the China question will be ever-present: A group of Chinese Catholics, as well as Russian Catholics, are expected to attend Francis’ Mass on Sunday in the Steppe Arena, but Beijing’s crackdown on religious minorities remains the backdrop to the trip.

In addition, China’s opposition to the Dalai Lama could come to the fore as Mongolian Buddhism is closely tied to Tibet’s strain and traditionally reveres the Dalai Lama. Francis has made a hallmark of meeting with religious leaders from around the world, but he has so far refrained from meeting the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, for fear of antagonizing Beijing.

Communist Party leader Xi has demanded that Catholicism and all other religions adhere strictly to party directives and undergo “Sinicization.” In the vast Xinjiang region, that has led to the demolition of an unknown number of mosques, but in most cases it has meant the removal of domes, minarets and exterior crosses from churches.

At the same time, Xi has shown no more desire to reconcile with the Vatican than his predecessors, while his administration continues to insist the Holy See cut all ties with Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims as its own territory.

The Vatican and China did sign an accord in 2018 over the thorny issue of bishop nominations, but Beijing has violated it. Most recently Francis was forced to accept the unilateral appointment of a new bishop of Shanghai, whose predecessor disappeared into a monastery almost immediately after announcing his withdrawal from the party-controlled Patriotic Catholic Association.

That said, Hong Kong’s newly appointed Bishop Stephen Sau-yan Chow visited Beijing in April, the first visit to the Chinese capital by the city’s bishop in nearly three decades.

Chow, who is to be made a cardinal by Francis in September, said he invited the state-appointed archbishop of Beijing Joseph Li to visit Hong Kong in a symbolic gesture that experts said could strengthen the fragile relationship between China and the Vatican.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Francis kicks off Apostolic Journey to Mongolia

By Devin Watkins

The papal plane took off from Rome’s Fiumicino Airport on Thursday afternoon at 6:41 PM bound for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

The flight is scheduled to last for nine and a half hours, and is due to land in the capital of Mongolia at 10 AM (GMT +8).

After departure, Pope Francis passed through the cabin and greeted the 70-odd journalists covering his Apostolic Journey to Mongolia. 

In off-the-cuff remarks, the Pope said his visit to the Asian nation offers a chance to embrace silence.

"To go to Mongolia is to go to a [numerically] small people in a vast land," he said. "Mongolia seems to have no end, and its inhabitants are few, a people few in number of a great culture. I think it will do us good to understand this silence, so vast, so big. It will help us understand what it means: not intellectually but with the senses. Mongolia is to be understood with the senses. Let me say that it would do us good perhaps to listen a to a little of Borodin's music, which was able to express what this breadth and greatness of Mongolia means."

As the Pope greeted Eva Fernandez Huescar, a journalist with Radio Cope, she presented him with a water canteen that belonged to a Ukrainian soldier who was wounded by an explosion. 

He blessed the shrapnel-riddled canteen, which the soldier had given to a church in Lviv to thank God for the gift of his life. Ms. Fernandez plans to return the canteen to the church after the visit to Mongolia has concluded.

Encounter with recipients of Church’s charity

Ahead of his departure, Pope Francis met with 12 residents of the Dormitory of Pope Francis, known as the "Gift of Mercy", which sits just outside the walls of Vatican City.

According to the Holy See Press Office, the men hail from various countries, and were part of a group of 30 people who on Wednesday helped to unload a shipment of humanitarian aid destined for Ukraine.

Around 300,000 portions of freeze-dried broth were shipped to the Vatican from South Korea to aid people suffering from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, told Vatican News that he had told the 12 men they would be working again on Thursday at 5:00 PM.

"Instead of loading aid onto trucks," said the Cardinal, "we went to greet the Holy Father before his visit to Mongolia. The guys were very surprised that it was possible to do that. I did not want to let them know in advance so that it would be a surprise for them. They were all very impressed that they met the Holy Father today. This is exactly how grace works."

The Pope's almoner also reiterated the symbolic character of this humanitarian aid to Ukraine, explaining that residents of the Dormitory of Pope Francis have enthusiastically taken part in the project to help those who currently face a very difficult situation.

Protection of Our Lady

Already on Wednesday afternoon, Pope Francis made his customary visit to the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

He paused in prayer before the ancient icon of Maria Salus Populi Romani and entrusted his Apostolic Journey to Mongolia to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Overview of Journey to Mongolia

The 4-day visit will see the Pope rest from his lengthy flight all day on Friday, before he begins his public events on Saturday.

He meets first with the President and civil authorities of Mongolia, and then holds an encounter with the Bishops, priests, religious men and women, and lay ministers at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ulaanbaatar.

On Sunday, Pope Francis holds an ecumenical and interreligious encounter in the morning and presides over a public Mass in the afternoon.

His only public event on Monday is a meeting with the Church’s charitable workers at the House of Mercy.

The Pope is scheduled to return to Rome at around 5:20 PM (GMT +2).

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Explainer: Mongolia only has 1,400 Catholics. Pope Francis is going there anyway.

While much of the world’s attention has focused in recent years on global superpowers Russia and China, the vast and sparsely-populated nation sandwiched between them, Mongolia, has often gone overlooked.

Once the seat of the mightiest land empire in history, Mongolia has a rich history and strong cultural identity rooted in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. The Catholic Church in Mongolia, however, is young: Aside from a few missionary visitors in the Middle Ages, the church has only had a presence in Mongolia for about 30 years.

The Catholic Church in Mongolia is young: Aside from a few missionary visitors in the Middle Ages, the church has only had a presence in Mongolia for about 30 years.

Pope Francis will visit Mongolia’s 1,400 Catholics from Aug. 31 to Sept. 4, speaking to civil and religious leaders, including missionaries and participants at an ecumenical and interreligious gathering, and will dedicate a new House of Mercy, one of the charitable organizations that are often Mongolians’ first encounter with the Catholic Church.

Ahead of the pope’s visit, I spoke with missionaries and native Mongolians about the Catholic Church’s presence in the country. Despite the nation’s proximity to Russia and China, where Pope Francis has fought an uphill battle to influence the nations toward peace, religious freedom and respect for human rights, the people I spoke with do not see the pope’s mission as being related to Mongolia’s neighbors at all. Instead, they believe Pope Francis is continuing his mission of visiting nations that are often overlooked, with small Catholic minorities, in order to encourage them and draw the world’s attention to the difficulties they face.

A tradition of religious tolerance

“The Mongols are largely credited with being very tolerant of other religions,” Dr. Timothy May, Professor of Central Eurasian History at the University of North Georgia and an expert on the Mongol Empire, told me. “In reality, it was more of religious ambivalence. They believed in celestial insurance: Everyone prayed for the khan.”

The Mongol Empire reached its pinnacle in the 13th and 14th centuries, stretching from Eastern Europe and the Levant to the Sea of Japan, as far north as the Arctic and as far south as India. The Mongols, therefore, ruled over an enormous territory that encompassed many religions. Their policy of religious tolerance helped the empire live in peace.

“In many areas, when the Mongols did come in, they were often seen as liberators from religious oppression,” Dr. May explained.

While religions including Buddhism, Islam and Christianity made inroads in the Mongol Empire, the Mongols themselves were largely shamanistic, embracing a system of religious practice that continues today. Shamanism takes many forms, but it is generally characterized by visiting a shaman, a person who is believed to have a special connection to the spirit world and can use that connection to heal people.

Today, about half of Mongolians live in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, with the rest spread thinly across the nation’s steppe.

After the Mongols invaded Europe in the 13th century, the first Catholics made their way to the steppe in what is now modern Mongolia. In the 1240s, Pope Innocent IV sent Franciscan friar John of Plano Carpini to visit the khan and invite him to become a Christian. Along the way, Dr. May said, he made records that he later presented to the pope.

“He had the makings of a great anthropologist in the level of detail he recorded,” Dr. May said. “He’s clearly a spy as well, because he is recording a lot of things about the military that you wouldn’t think a Franciscan friar would be very interested in.”

John of Plano Carpini returned to Innocent IV with a letter from Guyuk Khan demanding that the pope and the rulers of Europe come and submit to him. Popes generally avoided sending emissaries to Mongolia after that, and Christianity largely died out in the region when the Mongol Empire fell in the 14th century.

In the ensuing centuries, shamanism and Buddhism were the most commonly practiced religions in Mongolia, but the larger culture maintained its religious ambivalence.

After World War I, the country was briefly a Buddhist theocracy under the leadership of the Mongolian equivalent of the Dalai Lama, the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu. But after a Soviet-backed revolution in the early 1920s, Mongolia became the world’s second communist country, tolerating Buddhism for a few years before decimating the Buddhist population and initiating widespread purges of Buddhist monasteries.

From the 1930s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Mongolia was officially atheist. The few who maintained a religious practice did so in secret. After religious restrictions were lifted, missionary groups from around the world flooded in. In some cases, the government even invited them, knowing the missionaries could help provide education and social services to the many Mongolians who had been left destitute following the transition to a market economy.

Today, about half of Mongolians live in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, with the rest spread thinly across the nation’s steppe. It is the most sparsely populated country in the world. About 30 percent of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic, living in portable yurts called geres, traditional circular Mongolian tents.

Despite the 70 or so years of theocracy followed by state-mandated atheism, the wider Mongolian culture returned to its longstanding tradition of religious tolerance after the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, the country enjoys total religious freedom, although non-religious people make up a sizable portion—40 percent—of the population. Around half of the population is Buddhist, and the remaining 10 percent are Muslims, Shamanists and Christians. Of the 60,000 or so Christians in the country, only about 1,400 are Catholic.

The Catholic Church is generally well-regarded in the country, particularly compared with other Christian groups. While most Mongolians’ first connection with Christians is through social services provided by the churches, some Christian groups require people to be baptized before they can receive assistance. The Catholic Church has no such requirement.

“It’s seen as a benign entity,” Dr. May explains, “whereas some other organizations have been certainly scrutinized as, you know, ‘What are they really up to?’”

The Catholic Church is generally well-regarded in Mongolia, particularly compared with other Christian groups.

A foreign faith

At the same time, there is some suspicion towards Catholicism and Christianity in general, as it is still seen as a Western religion. Many Mongolian Catholic converts are the only Catholics or Christians in their family. This often leads to tensions within families, or at least a lack of understanding.

The Rev. Peter Turrone, a former Consolata Missionary from Canada whose first assignment was to rural Mongolia from 2010 to 2013, shared the story of a young woman who got to know some Salesian missionaries by playing basketball with them. She eventually became interested in Catholicism and started to study Scripture with the brothers.

“Her father was very upset about this, and it created a lot of friction within the family for quite a while,” Father Turrone explained. “But then she ended up getting baptized, and I think it was her tenacity and the fact that she showed love and respect and patience for her family, particularly for her father, which kind of made things better over time. But again, there was a misunderstanding: This is something that is foreign, it’s something outside of who we are, and therefore it can be seen as a threat.”

At the same time, Father Turrone admits, Catholicism being perceived as Western can also be a draw for young Mongolians, who are in general interested in Western culture.

He explained that Catholicism’s “otherness” in Mongolia can paradoxically help Mongolian Catholics who feel isolated in their families to feel connected with a worldwide community.

Father Turrone said that his Mongolian parish had planned to build a grotto in honor of Our Lady of Consolation. His religious superiors met with Mongolian Catholics and asked them what they wanted the statue of Mary to look like. “The people said, ‘Well, what does Our Lady of Consolation look like in Italy? What’s the statue you have around the world?’ And we said, ‘Well, this is the statue.’ And they said, ‘Why can’t we have the same one?’”

The story points to a central lesson that Father Turrone has learned in his time as a missionary: The inculturation of Catholicism has to be led by the people, rather than the missionaries.

In his studies at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, which trains missionaries, “we were made very sensitive to the different cultures and the necessity of recognizing that the Holy Spirit is already there,” he said. “We’re not there to impose a culture; we’re there to present a person. We’re there to present Jesus Christ. And it’s not the foreign missionary who is the one to inculturate the message, but it’s the people who receive the message. And that takes generations.”

Some inculturation, however, is already happening. Ten years ago, in Father Turrone’s mission, the central chapel was a gere. The cathedral in Ulaanbaatar, where Pope Francis will speak to bishops, priests, religious, missionaries and pastoral workers, is also built in the shape of a gere and contains images of a Mongolian Madonna and child.

Cardinal Marengo is currently traveling to every parish in Mongolia to spend four or five days there in order to encourage and get to know the communities.

Brother Andrew Tran, a Vietnamese Salesian of Don Bosco who works in a mission in Ulaanbaatar, is coordinating Pope Francis’ visit to the country. He was one of the missionaries invited by the Mongolian government to establish a technical school there in 2004. Today, in addition to working in his order’s finance office, he also helps to run an orphanage that houses 20 boys.

Over the last 19 years—almost two-thirds of Mongolia’s Catholic history—Brother Andrew has seen that Mongolians can often relate to the Gospel stories more easily than people from other places.

“The country of the Bible and the country of Mongolia are a little similar because of the nomadic [shepherds] in the steppe. The concept of being a good shepherd, to care for the sheep, people find it very similar to their daily practice,” he explained. Even though about half of Mongolians live in urban Ulaanbaatar, the image of a traditional Mongolian shepherd remains culturally important.

Likewise, it provides a connection point for a religion whose central message—of a God who suffers and is crucified—stands in contrast to the Mongolian cultural values of strength rooted in the legacy of Genghis Khan.

Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, in an interview with the YouTube channel Catholic Kazakhstan—another often-overlooked Central Asian country Pope Francis has visited—explained that during a discernment process the Mongolian Catholic community undertook last year, one need that emerged was “that we need really to be more and more rooted, to go deeper and deeper, into the society, so that our faith doesn’t seem something external or foreign.”

That takes not only time but active accompaniment, living closely with the people, getting to know them and walking with them on their faith journey.

For his part, Cardinal Marengo, the world’s youngest cardinal, is currently traveling to every parish in Mongolia to spend four or five days there in order to encourage and get to know the communities.

Likewise, the last 19 years have taught Brother Andrew to see his primary role as a missionary as one of accompaniment.

“The challenge for [Mongolian Catholics] is how to keep their faith, how to sustain their faith,” especially when they are the only Catholics in their family, Brother Andrew said. “And to [help] explain to a family member that being baptized, being Catholic, is not excluding other religions, but we live in harmony.”

Harmony with other religions is a hallmark of the church’s presence in Mongolia—and one that Pope Francis hopes to bolster.

'We live in harmony' with other religions

This harmony with other religions is a hallmark of the church’s presence in Mongolia—and one that Pope Francis hopes to bolster both with his trip and his appointment of Cardinal Marengo. The pope announced his elevation to cardinal when then-Bishop Marengo was visiting the Vatican with a delegation of Mongolian Buddhists.

Father Turrone, who lived in community with Cardinal Marengo, said he cried when he heard the announcement.

“Giorgio [Marengo] was like a brother to me, even though he was my religious superior. Giorgio is an incredibly humble man, and he’s very talented. His Mongolian is so perfect that people thought we were tricking them when they would meet him in person after having spoken to him over the phone,” Father Turrone said.

It is clear that Pope Francis sees Cardinal Marengo as an ideal missionary—one who is immersed in local language and culture, who works well with members of other religions while remaining rooted in his own in a way that is joyful, who draws others in and makes them curious about the source of his joy. It is a model the pope laid out in “ Evangelii Gaudium ” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), and one he hopes to encourage by reforming the church’s central structures to focus primarily on evangelization .

Pope Francis’ goal in visiting Mongolia will be not only to encourage the tiny Mongolian Catholic community, helping them feel connected to the universal church, but also to encourage the kind of interreligious dialogue that Cardinal Marengo has been undertaking and that the pope has emphasized in his many visits to Catholic-minority countries thus far. The pope will give a highly anticipated speech at an ecumenical and interreligious gathering in Ulaanbaatar on Sept. 3.

For Brother Andrew, the visit will not only be an encouragement toward dialogue and for the Mongolian Catholics but also for his own mission work.

“I feel a little empowered to be more confident as a missionary” now that the pope is visiting, he said. “Coming from a small country, before I got lost. Sometimes I feel shy to talk to people; I feel a little small in the crowd. Now, you see, the picture has been changed a little bit.”

“Of course, after the Holy Father leaves, life continues. We cannot stop there,” Brother Andrew said. “And this continuation of missionary work is not just a moment of blooming and dying again, but it will the spirit going on to another, higher level—that’s what I hope.”

Colleen Dulle is an associate editor at America and co-hosts the "Inside the Vatican" podcast.

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Pope Francis Visits Mongolia Amid Vatican’s Strained Relations With China and Russia

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday morning to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities.

It's the first time a pope has visited the landlocked Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained.

Francis arrived in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar after an overnight flight passing through Chinese airspace, affording the pontiff a rare opportunity to send a  note of greetings to President Xi Jinping . Vatican protocol calls for the pope to send such greetings whenever he flies over a foreign country.

In his message to Xi, Francis expressed “greetings of good wishes to your excellency and the people of China.”

“Assuring you of my prayers for the wellbeing of the nation, I invoke upon all of you the divine blessings of unity and peace,” Francis said.

Despite strains in the relationship, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the greeting showed “friendliness and goodwill.”

"China is willing to continue to walk in the same direction with the Vatican, conduct constructive dialogues, enhance understanding, accumulate mutual trust, and promote the process of improving the relationship of the two sides,” Wang said at a daily briefing.

Upon arrival, Francis, who uses a wheelchair, was met on the tarmac by helmeted honor guards along with Mongolia's foreign minister and was offered a taste of dried yoghurt from a woman in traditional dress, in a sign of welcome. He made no public comments. Along with priests and others gathered on the tarmac, several dozen watched his arrival from the airport terminal.

Speaking to reporters en route to Mongolia late Thursday, Francis said he was looking forward to visiting a country that has just a few people, but with a culture that you need your senses to understand.

“There are only a few inhabitants — a small people, but a big culture,” he said aboard the ITA charter plane. “I think it will do us good to try to understand this long, big silence, understand what it means but not intellectually, but with senses.” He added: “Mongolia, you understand with your senses.”

On tap are official meetings with the Mongolian president and prime minister and a speech before Mongolian government, cultural and business leaders, followed by Francis’ first encounter with the bishops, priests and nuns who form the backbone of a tiny Catholic community of 1,450 that has only been in existence for a generation.

While Christianity has been  present in the region for hundreds of years , the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence in Mongolia since 1992, after the country shrugged off its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution.

The Holy See and Mongolia have had diplomatic relations ever since, and a handful of missionary religious orders including Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity have nurtured the tiny community through its first three decades of life.

Four Missionaries of Charity sisters — Jeanne Francoise from Rwanda; Chanmi from South Korea; Viera from Slovakia and Suder from India — run a nursing home on the northern outskirts of Ulaanbaatar with a capacity of 30 beds. There, they provide care for elderly people with mental or physical disabilities, or who are homeless, undocumented, or otherwise ostracized by their families.

Sister Jeanne Francoise said it was an honor that Francis was coming to Mongolia, saying she had seen him once before when she was living in Rome but that it was never as “close” as it would be in Mongolia.

Francis has long praised the work of missionaries and has tried to reinvigorate the missionary focus of the church at large by visiting them and encouraging their work. One of his first events in Mongolia is to preside over an encounter with missionaries Saturday afternoon at the capital’s St. Peter and Paul cathedral, and he ends his visit by inaugurating a new church-run charity house to tend to Mongolia’s poorest.

“I want people to know that the Catholic religion, the Catholic Church, and Catholic believers also exist in Mongolia,” the Rev. Sanjaajav Tserenkhand, a Mongolian priest, said outside the cathedral. He said he hoped that Francis’ visit would also show Mongolians that Christianity isn’t a “foreign religion,” but is also rooted in the country.

The Argentine pontiff has long prioritized visiting Catholic communities in what he calls the peripheries, staying away from the global centers of Catholicism to minister instead to small churches where Catholics are often a minority. He has made cardinals out of their leaders to show the universal reach of the 1.3-billion strong Catholic Church, including the head of the Mongolian church, Cardinal Giorgio Marengo.

“His heart burns with love for the universal church, and especially the church where she lives in a minority context,” Marengo told journalists  during a recent visit to Rome . “And that is the wonderful meaning of his coming all the way to Mongolia.”

The other main focus of Francis’ four-day visit is to highlight Mongolia’s long tradition of interfaith coexistence. The Mongol Empire under its famed founder Genghis Khan was known for tolerating people of different faiths among those it conquered, and Francis will likely emphasize that tradition when he presides over an interfaith meeting Sunday.

Invited are Mongolian Buddhists, who are the majority in the nation of 3.3 million, as well as Jewish, Muslim and Shinto representatives and members of Christian churches that have established a presence in Mongolia in the last 30 years, including the Russian Orthodox Church.

That encounter could enable Francis to once again offer greetings to the Moscow patriarchate, which has  strongly supported the Kremlin’s war  in Ukraine. Francis has tried to steer a diplomatic tightrope in not antagonizing Moscow, consistent with the Vatican’s tradition of diplomatic neutrality in conflicts.

Days before his visit, he sparked  outrage in Ukraine  over his praise of Russia’s imperial past, comments that the Vatican insisted were by no means an endorsement of Moscow’s current war of aggression in Ukraine.

While the Vatican has insisted Francis is going to Mongolia — not China or Russia — the China question will be ever-present: A group of Chinese Catholics, as well as Russian Catholics, are expected to attend Francis’ Mass on Sunday in the Steppe Arena, but Beijing’s crackdown on religious minorities remains the backdrop to the trip.

In addition,  China’s opposition to the Dalai Lama  could come to the fore as Mongolian Buddhism is closely tied to Tibet’s strain and traditionally reveres the Dalai Lama. Francis has made a hallmark of meeting with religious leaders from around the world, but he has so far refrained from meeting the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, for fear of antagonizing Beijing.

Communist Party leader Xi has demanded that Catholicism and all other religions adhere strictly to party directives and undergo “Sinicization.” In the vast Xinjiang region, that has led to the demolition of an unknown number of mosques, but in most cases it has meant the removal of domes, minarets and exterior crosses from churches.

At the same time, Xi has shown no more desire to reconcile with the Vatican than his predecessors, while his administration continues to insist the Holy See cut all ties with Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims as its own territory.

The Vatican and China did sign an accord in 2018 over the thorny issue of bishop nominations, but Beijing has violated it. Most recently Francis was  forced to accept the unilateral appointment  of a new bishop of Shanghai, whose predecessor disappeared into a monastery almost immediately after announcing his withdrawal from the party-controlled Patriotic Catholic Association.

That said, Hong Kong’s newly appointed Bishop Stephen Sau-yan Chow visited Beijing in April, the  first visit to the Chinese capital  by the city’s bishop in nearly three decades.

Chow, who is to be made a cardinal by Francis in September, said he  invited the state-appointed archbishop  of Beijing Joseph Li to visit Hong Kong in a symbolic gesture that experts said could strengthen the fragile relationship between China and the Vatican.

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Pope arrives in Mongolia, home to one of the world’s smallest Catholic communities

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Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday morning to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Roman Catholic communities .

It’s the first time a pope has visited the landlocked Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained .

Francis arrived in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator after an overnight flight passing through Chinese airspace, affording the pontiff a rare opportunity to send a note of greeting to President Xi Jinping. Vatican protocol calls for the pope to send such greetings whenever he flies over a foreign country.

In his message to Xi, Francis expressed “greetings of good wishes to your excellency and the people of China.”

“Assuring you of my prayers for the well-being of the nation, I invoke upon all of you the divine blessings of unity and peace,” Francis said.

Despite strains in the relationship , Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the greeting showed “friendliness and goodwill.”

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“China is willing to continue to walk in the same direction with the Vatican, conduct constructive dialogues, enhance understanding, accumulate mutual trust and promote the process of improving the relationship of the two sides,” Wang said at a daily briefing.

Upon arrival, Francis, who sometimes uses a wheelchair , was met on the airport tarmac by helmeted honor guards along with Mongolia’s foreign minister and was offered a taste of dried yogurt from a woman in traditional dress in a sign of welcome. He made no public comments. Along with priests and others gathered on the tarmac, several dozen people watched his arrival from the airport terminal.

Speaking to reporters en route to Mongolia late Thursday, the pope said he was looking forward to visiting a country with a sparse population of 3.3 million but with a culture that one needed to understand sensually.

“There are only a few inhabitants — a small people but a big culture,” he said aboard the charter flight. “I think it will do us good to try to understand this long, big silence, understand what it means — but not intellectually, but with senses.” He added: “Mongolia, you understand with your senses.”

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On tap are official meetings with the Mongolian president and prime minister and a speech to government, cultural and business leaders, followed by Francis’ first encounter with the bishops, priests and nuns who form the backbone of a tiny Catholic community of 1,450 that has been in existence for only a generation .

While Christianity has been present in the region for hundreds of years, the Catholic Church has had a sanctioned presence in Mongolia only since 1992, after the country shrugged off its Soviet-allied Communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution.

The Holy See and Mongolia have had diplomatic relations ever since, and a handful of missionary religious orders, including Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity , have nurtured the tiny Catholic community through its first three decades.

Four Missionaries of Charity sisters — Jeanne Francoise from Rwanda, Chanmi from South Korea, Viera from Slovakia and Suder from India — run a nursing home on the northern outskirts of Ulan Bator with a capacity of 30 beds. There, they provide care for older people with mental or physical disabilities, or who are homeless, in the country without authorization, or otherwise ostracized by their families.

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Sister Jeanne Francoise said it was an honor that Francis was coming to Mongolia, saying that she had seen him once before when she was living in Rome but that it was never as “close” as it would be in Mongolia.

Francis has long praised the work of missionaries and has tried to reinvigorate the missionary focus of the church at large by visiting them and encouraging their work. One of his first events in Mongolia is to preside over an encounter with missionaries Saturday afternoon at the capital’s St. Peter and Paul cathedral, and he will close his visit by inaugurating a new church-run charity house to tend to Mongolia’s poorest.

“I want people to know that the Catholic religion, the Catholic Church and Catholic believers also exist in Mongolia,” the Rev. Sanjaajav Tserenkhand, a Mongolian priest, said outside the cathedral. He said he hoped that Francis’ visit would show Mongolians that Christianity isn’t a “foreign religion” but is also rooted in the country.

The Argentine pontiff has long prioritized visiting Catholic communities in what he calls the peripheries , staying away from the global centers of Catholicism to minister instead to small churches where Catholics are often a minority. He has made cardinals out of their leaders to show the universal reach of the 1.3-billion strong Catholic Church, including the head of the Mongolian church, Cardinal Giorgio Marengo.

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“His heart burns with love for the universal church and especially the church where she lives in a minority context,” Marengo told journalists during a recent visit to Rome. “And that is the wonderful meaning of his coming all the way to Mongolia.”

The other main focus of Francis’ four-day visit is to highlight Mongolia’s long tradition of interfaith coexistence. The Mongol Empire under its famed founder, Genghis Khan , was known for tolerating people of different faiths among those it conquered, and Francis will likely emphasize that tradition when he presides over an interfaith meeting Sunday.

Invited are Mongolian Buddhists, who are the majority in the nation, as well as Jewish, Muslim and Shinto representatives and members of Christian churches that have established a presence in Mongolia in the last 30 years, including the Russian Orthodox Church.

That encounter could enable Francis to once again offer greetings to the Moscow patriarchate, which has strongly supported the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Francis has tried to steer a diplomatic tightrope in not antagonizing Moscow, consistent with the Vatican’s tradition of diplomatic neutrality in conflicts.

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Days before his visit, he sparked outrage in Ukraine over his praise of Russia’s imperial past , comments that the Vatican insisted were by no means an endorsement of Moscow’s current war of aggression in Ukraine.

Although Francis is not visiting China or Russia, the China question will be ever-present on his trip. Some Chinese Catholics, as well as Russian Catholics, are expected to attend Francis’ Mass on Sunday in the Steppe Arena, but the Chinese government has cracked down on religious minorities at home.

In addition, China’s opposition to the Dalai Lama could come to the fore as Mongolian Buddhism is closely tied to the Tibetan strain and traditionally reveres the Dalai Lama . Francis has made a habit of meeting with religious leaders from around the world, but he has so far refrained from meeting the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader for fear of antagonizing Beijing.

Chinese President Xi has demanded that Catholicism and all other religions adhere strictly to ruling Communist Party directives and undergo “Sinicization.” In the vast Xinjiang region of western China, that has led to the demolition of an unknown number of mosques, but in most cases it has meant the removal of domes, minarets and exterior crosses from churches.

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At the same time, Xi has shown no more desire to reconcile with the Vatican than his predecessors, while his administration continues to insist that the Holy See cut all ties with Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims as its own territory .

The Vatican and China did sign an accord in 2018 over the thorny issue of bishop nominations , but Beijing has violated it. Most recently, Francis was forced to accept the unilateral appointment of a new bishop of Shanghai, whose predecessor disappeared into a monastery almost immediately after announcing his withdrawal from the party-controlled Patriotic Catholic Assn.

That said, Hong Kong’s newly appointed Bishop Stephen Sau-yan Chow visited Beijing in April, the first visit to the Chinese capital by the city’s bishop in nearly three decades.

Chow, who is to be made a cardinal by Francis in September, said he invited the state-appointed archbishop of Beijing, Joseph Li, to visit Hong Kong in a symbolic gesture that experts said could strengthen the fragile relationship between China and the Vatican.

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‘Lively in faith’: Pope Francis heads to Mongolia with eye on diplomacy

Mongolia, bordering Russia and China, could help ease church’s troubled relations with Beijing and support the pontiff’s efforts for dialogue on Ukraine.

Pope Francis has a reputation for visiting some of the world’s most remote countries, even in places where Catholics are few in number. So, it may not be too surprising that this week he will be in Mongolia, a nation with just 1,450 Catholics.

Francis will arrive in the Mongolian capital on September 1 and stay until September 4, with plans to meet the country’s Catholic faithful, celebrate mass and engage in inter-religious dialogue.

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Talking about the visit at St Peter’s Square on the Sunday before his departure, the 86-year-old pope told the crowd the church there was “small in numbers, but lively in faith and great in charity”.

But there may be more to the papal visit than religion.

The pope’s schedule also includes a full day of meetings with Mongolia’s political leaders, with conversations likely to touch on Mongolia’s relations with its two giant neighbours, Russia and China. That is important now more than ever as Francis seeks dialogue between the West and Russia to find a way out of the now-18-month-old war in Ukraine.

The pope is also looking for avenues to speak to China’s leadership over the governance of that country’s estimated 10 to 12 million Catholics. The Holy See and Beijing have not had official diplomatic relations for more than 70 years and relations between the two have been strained over the appointment of bishops and creation of dioceses despite an agreement on the issue in 2018.

In April, without Vatican approval, Beijing appointed a new bishop for Shanghai, the country’s biggest diocese.

The hope is that Mongolia, which has good relationships with both Moscow and Beijing, may be able to create an opening for dialogue between Beijing and the Catholic Church .

For Mongolia, the pontiff’s visit matters because it signals Ulaanbaatar’s rise as an intermediary between powers who do not always get along, explained Amar Adiya, the publisher of Mongolia Weekly newsletter.

“It also boosts Mongolia’s credentials as a religiously tolerant democracy in contrast to its neighbours,” he said.

The trip also briefly puts Mongolia on the world stage, said Adiya.

“The big picture is that Mongolia has come a long way from the 13th century when its rulers demanded a pope’s submission,” he said, referring to a letter sent by Guyuk Khan in 1246 to the Vatican with the insistence that Pope Innocent IV surrender to Mongol authority.

“This visit reflects Mongolia’s evolution into a partner across cultures,” said Adiya.

Jack Weatherford, a historian and author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, notes that the message bearer between Guyuk Khan and Pope Innocent IV was the Franciscan monk John of Plano Carpini.

Other Franciscans followed in an effort to connect Mongolians and Europeans.

“It seems fitting that now, nearly eight centuries later, the first pope to visit Mongolia is also the first to bear the name of Francis,” Weatherford said.

Key connection

Francis’s visit to Mongolia correlates with his past travel routine of seeking out nations where he can exercise both political and religious muscle.

In April, he was in Hungary where he met Ukrainian refugees and the Russian Orthodox Church leader. In January, Francis visited the conflict zones – the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan – where he travelled on a ‘pilgrimage of peace’. He has also toured countries including Kazakhstan, Iraq and southern Africa in recent years.

The papal visit to Mongolia comes as the world watches China and Russia increase cooperation and try to pull other countries into their orbit. Some say Ulaanbaatar may be an opportunity for the Vatican to sneak in through the back door, as it were.

“Mongolia emerges as a potential conduit through which the Catholic Church could foster connections with both China and Russia,” said Zolbayar Enkhbaatar, co-founder of Lemon Press, a financial media company in Mongolia. “Mongolia is a strategically important destination for the Catholic Church.”

Mongolia does have some experience in international diplomacy. In recent years, the country has developed the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue which has brought together countries including Japan and North Korea to discuss regional issues.

From a religious perspective, the pope will be speaking to a nation that, for the most part, follows Tibetan Buddhism mixed with a native culture of shamanism. According to the United States state department, about 40 percent of Mongolians are not religious, but among those who expressed a religious identity, 87 percent declared themselves Buddhist and just two percent Christian.

Historically, the Mongols have been in contact with Christians since the seventh century, when Nestorian Christians arrived on the fringes of Mongolian lands. During the time of the Mongol Empire, in the 1200s, several Christian missionaries were dispatched from Europe to try and convert the Mongol khans.

Mongolia did not become a Christian nation, but it has long been willing to learn from other cultures and religions.

“I hope that the pope’s visit will be a celebration of religious tolerance and openness,” said Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, the chair of Mongolia’s Civic Unity Party, and a former minister of sport, culture and tourism.

She called the trip historic and expects that Francis will see Mongolia as a peace-loving nation.

“It doesn’t matter how many people are Catholic in our predominantly Buddhist country. It matters that the entire population of Mongolia embraces religious diversity and loves peace and freedom,” she said.

What the pope’s visit to Mongolia says about his priorities and how he is changing the Catholic Church

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Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Mongolia, which is home to fewer than 1,500 Catholics, has elicited curiosity among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

This will be the pope’s 43rd trip abroad since his election on March 13, 2013: He has visited 12 countries in the Americas, 11 in Asia and 10 in Africa.

What do these visits tell us about this pope’s mission and focus?

As a scholar of Roman Catholicism, I have studied Catholicism’s appeal for immigrants and refugees, and I argue that the pontiff’s official travels since 2013 are part of his decadelong effort to rebrand the Roman Catholic Church as a religious institution that centers the poor.

Prioritizing the poor

While previous popes have included the poor in their speeches, what has distinguished this pope is that he has focused on the Global South and prioritized immigrants, refugees and the less privileged, from Bolivia to Myanmar to Mongolia.

At his July 2013 visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa to commemorate migrants who had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, Francis gave a blistering critique of the world’s failure to care for the poor: “In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference . We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!”

Three years later, the pope flew 12 Syrian Muslim refugees from a Greek refugee camp to Rome. Francis is the first pope to relocate refugees and to work with groups like The Community of St. Egidio charity in Rome that have successfully resettled thousands of refugees.

During my own interviews with Central American Catholic immigrants and refugees in central and eastern Iowa between 2013-2020 for my book, “ Meatpacking America ,” I heard from women and men who fled violence and poverty in their home nations that they look up to this pope “because he cares about us,” as Fernando said. And Josefina told me back in 2017 that this pope is “the real deal” in terms of supporting immigrants and the poor.

Francis and liberation theology

His predecessors – Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict – specifically condemned liberation theology , a philosophy rooted in Catholic social teachings that calls for a preferential option for the poor and an embrace of Marxist ideology.

According to Austen Ivereigh prior to his becoming pope, Francis — then Jorge Mario Bergoglio – condemned liberation theology as well . He would say “that they were for the people but never with them,” wrote Ivereigh, in his biography of Pope Francis.

Since his election as pope, however, Francis has undertaken what I call “people-focused” liberationism. In one of his first official announcements in 2013, “Evangelii Gaudium,” or “The Joy of the Gospel,” the pope wrote about the essential inclusion of the poor in society, arguing that “without the preferential option for the poor, the proclamation of the Gospel, which is itself the prime form of charity, risks being misunderstood or submerged by the ocean of words which daily engulfs us in today’s society of mass communications.”

In other words, the Gospel’s message that all Christians proclaim doesn’t mean a whole lot if the poor are not central to the goal of personal as well as collective salvation.

Journeying to Mongolia

How does the pope’s upcoming visit to Mongolia factor into this decade-spanning trajectory of his people-focused liberation?

Christianity has been present in Mongolia since the seventh century. Nestorianism, an Eastern branch of Christianity named after the Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, who lived from 386 C.E. to 451 C.E., coexisted alongside an even older religious practice, shamanism, which emphasized the natural world and dates to the third century. Nestorians believe that Christ had two natures – one human and one divine.

While Mary was seen as important within Nestorian theology as Christ’s mother, she is not seen as divine. This is similar to Roman Catholic theology where Mary is deemed special because she is Christ’s mother and worthy of veneration.

According to historian Robert Merrihew Adams , the missionary activity of Nestorian Christians in central Asia from the seventh to the 13th centuries was “ the most impressive Christian enterprise ” of the Middle Ages because of its rapid spread and influence.

Adams argues that Nestorianism’s spread was in part because of its belief that Christ was a two-natured individual – one divine and one human. These two natures in one body meshed well with preexisting shamanic beliefs, as shamanism sees individuals as able to harness the supernatural.

In addition to this branch of Eastern Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism came to Mongolia in the 13th century, as did Islam. Today, Buddhism is the dominant religion of Mongolia , while Islam and Christianity remain very small percentages at 3% and 2.5%.

Pope Francis has made it clear throughout his tenure that interfaith dialogue is an essential remedy to division. During his visit he will preside over an interfaith gathering and the opening of a Catholic charity house.

A strategic visit

The past decade has brought rapid urbanization and growth in major cities such as the capital of Ulaanbaatar, along with high rates of unemployment and Covid-era economic downturn.

And yet, according to the World Bank, the economic forecast for Mongolia remains “promising” because of its rich natural resources, such as gold, copper, coal and other minerals.

However, extraction of Mongolia’s resources is occurring at a rapid pace – so much so that the country, according to the Harvard International Review, has been called “Minegolia.” The United States has made significant investment in Mongolia’s mining industry, and China is a major importer of Mongolian coal. Two rail lines connecting Mongolia to China were installed in January 2022 and a third is being built.

In the past, Francis has made strong comments against corruption and environmental degradation, and it would not be surprising if he addressed the challenges of the mining industry during his trip. During his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, he critiqued the Global North that contributed to “the poison of greed” that has “smeared its diamonds with blood.” In 2018, the pope spent a few hours in Madre de Dios, an area in the Peruvian Amazon, where mining has led to large-scale environmental degradation.

The pope’s visit will be bold given the challenges before Mongolia and its geographic location between Russia and China. A peace delegation on behalf of Pope Francis for the war in Ukraine, led by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, that visted Russia this summer is likely to head to China in the coming months .

As Italian Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, a missionary in Mongolia for two decades, has emphasized, Pope Francis’s visit to this country with a tiny minority of Catholics will “ manifest the attention that the (pope) has for every individual, every person who embarks in this journey of faith.”

This piece has been updated to correct the depiction of the Roman Catholic Church’s view on Mary’s divinity.

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With China on his mind, pope visits tiny Catholic flock in Mongolia

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• Predominantly Buddhist Mongolia has just 1,450 Catholics
• Francis' policy is to draw attention to people on periphery
• Vatican has had difficult relations with China
• Mongolia seen as possible intermediary with Beijing

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Additional reporting by Joseph Campbell in Ulaanbaatar and David Stanway in Singapore; Additional writing by Alvise Armellini; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Susan Fenton and Nick Macfie

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