Pope Francis Visits Mongolian Catholics

September 3, 2023192 views0

Pope Francis Visits Mongolian Catholics

2023-09-03T11:43:33+01:00

By Marie

Pope Francis visits Mongolian Catholics, who could be squeezed standing into St. Peter’s Basilica dozens of times over as their number is smaller than the congregation of a small parish in some small towns.Pope Francis, who will be attending an inter-religious service in Mongolia, said at his weekly noon address last Sunday that he would be visiting “a Church that is small in numbers but vivacious in faith”.Last year, Pope Francis named Archbishop Giorgio Marengo, an Italian, the first cardinal to be based in Mongolia, where he is the Catholic Church’s administrator.“The originality of this trip is related to the originality of the country sparsely populated and with such a small Catholic community,” Marengo said last month in Rome.“This shows how for him (the pope), every single member of the faithful is important,” said Marengo, who has been a missionary in Mongolia for more than 20 years.Mongolia has nine parishes, compared to 25,500 in Italy. The smallest one, hundreds of miles from the capital, has only between 30-40 members.Still, the visit will show how far it has come since locals watched “these funny foreigners praying,” Marengo said.There are only two native Mongolian Catholic priests.“I wanted to show the world that there is a Catholic Church (in Mongolia) and it’s beautiful,” said one of them, Father Peter Sanjaajav, after saying Mass at the Cathedral the pope will visit on Saturday as part of the Aug. 31-Sept 4 trip.The country of about 3.3 million people is strategically significant for the Roman Catholic Church because of its proximity to China, where the Vatican is trying to improve the situation of Catholics amid sometimes scratchy relations with the communist government.ALSO READ: How God Rescued a Former Gang Member