In choosing to visit this sparsely populated country with a huge Buddhist majority, Pope Francis may be looking at Mongolia as a way to “build bridges” with its neighbors China and Russia, given the country’s strategic location and neutrality in this volatile region. , writes France Press.
The trip, which includes a nine-hour flight from Rome to the capital Ulaanbaatar tomorrow, will also be a closely watched test of endurance for the 86-year-old pope, who underwent hernia surgery in June and is experiencing pain when walking.
A former satellite state of the Soviet Union, where democracy has existed since 1992, Mongolia has one of the youngest and most modest Catholic communities in the world, estimated at approximately 1,400 in a population of 3.3 million.
There are only twenty-five Catholic priests serving in the country – only two of them are Mongolians, and 33 nuns according to data from the Vatican, although it is there that the youngest cardinal of the Catholic Church is.
Francis’ trip to rapidly urbanizing Ulaanbaatar is an expression of the Jesuit pope’s desire to convey a message from the Roman Catholic Church to neglected regions far from Rome, while advocating interfaith dialogue.
It will be “an opportunity to embrace a church small in number of believers, but overflowing with faith and great in the charity shown,” the pope said on Sunday.
However, the visit, which should last until September 4, also has indisputable geopolitical goals.
The Vatican’s long-term thinking is “to maintain a presence and openness of the church in countries where that cannot be taken for granted,” said Paul Ealy, a senior fellow at American University’s Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace and International Affairs. Georgetown for AFP.
“If his going to Mongolia leaves the door open to this whole region, then it will be a worthwhile visit with relatively few downsides,” Illi adds.
“Rediscovering Values”
Once part of Genghis Khan’s empire, landlocked Mongolia is sandwiched between Russia and China, dependent on one for energy imports and the other for exports of its raw materials, mainly coal.
But Mongolia strives to maintain a line of neutrality vis-à-vis expansionist neighbors, trying to strike a balance between powers such as the US, Japan and South Korea.
That makes Mongolia potentially useful for Vatican relations both with Beijing, with which the Holy See last year renewed its agreement on the thorny issue of appointing bishops, and with Moscow, with which Pope Francis has tried to mediate an end to the war in Ukraine.
And Mongolia also maintains relations with North Korea.
“This country doesn’t have disputes with its neighbors – that’s rare in Asia,” says Julian Dierkes, a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
“And it’s really the only post-socialist democracy in Asia, all the others didn’t survive,” he adds.
This has prompted a “rediscovery of values” in relations between democracies and Mongolia in the context of growing Russian aggression and the anxiety an uncontrolled China is causing, Dierkes said.
First papal visit
Francis is the first pope to visit Mongolia. He arrives on Friday morning and will have a day to rest before his official meetings on Saturday, including with the country’s Prime Minister Luvsanamsrein Ouyun-Erdene, civil society representatives, diplomats, priests and missionaries.
On Sunday, Francis will address a meeting of representatives of different religions and denominations – one of the five planned addresses of the pope – and will lead a mass in a newly built hockey hall.
It is not scheduled to go beyond Ulaanbaatar, a city where coal windfalls over the past decade have led to a boom in construction activity.
Pope Francis may use the trip to share his concern about the impact of climate change, which, along with mining and overgrazing, is depopulating more and more of Mongolia’s territory.
Weather disasters – from devastating floods to drought and sandstorms – have decimated entire herds across the vast grasslands, forcing the nomads, who make up a third of Mongolia’s population, to migrate to the capital, Ulaanbaatar.
And now the capital is surrounded by slums inhabited by the resettled nomads.
Protests erupted in December, fueled by a corruption scandal in the coal industry and exacerbated by current popular discontent over a weak economy and high inflation linked to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.
The youngest cardinal
The pope’s visit was preceded by months of flurry of diplomatic activity by Mongolia, including Prime Minister Luvsanamsrein Oyun-Erdene’s visit to Washington this month and French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Ulaanbaatar in June.
Last year, a Mongolian delegation of Buddhist monks and Catholic priests visited the Vatican on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Mongolia.
It was headed by the youngest Catholic cardinal, the 49-year-old Italian Giorgio Marengo, appointed by Pope Francis last year. In his capacity as apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, the missionary, who has worked in Mongolia for 20 years and helped establish the first Catholic church in a traditional nomadic tent – ger (home in Mongolian – note ed.), is the highest-ranking Catholic priest in the country. (BTA)
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2023-08-30 18:00:00
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