{"id":31961,"date":"2023-09-02T18:52:44","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T00:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pope-starts-mongolia-visit-with-a-nod-to-religious-freedom\/"},"modified":"2023-09-03T00:52:44","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T00:52:44","slug":"pope-starts-mongolia-visit-with-a-nod-to-religious-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pope-starts-mongolia-visit-with-a-nod-to-religious-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope starts Mongolia visit with a nod to religious freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mongolian
Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, right, claps his hands at Pope Francis signing the honor book as they meet, Saturday at the State Palace in Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar. Remo Casilli\/The Associated Press<\/span>Remo Casilli<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia \u2013 Pope Francis on Saturday praised Mongolia\u2019s tradition of religious freedom dating to the times of its founder, Genghis Khan, as he opened the first-ever papal visit to the Asian nation with a word of encouragement to its tiny Catholic flock.<\/p>\n

Francis met with President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh inside a traditional Mongolian ger, or round yurt, set up inside the state palace and wrote a message in the guest book that he was visiting \u201ca country young and ancient, modern and rich of tradition,\u201d as a pilgrim of peace.<\/p>\n

Francis is in Mongolia to minister to one of the world\u2019s newest and smallest Catholic communities \u2013 around 1,450 Mongolians are Catholic \u2013 and make a diplomatic foray into a region where the Holy See has long had troubled relations, with Russia to the north and China to the south.<\/p>\n

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 abandoned its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution.<\/p>\n

While Catholicism is tolerated and legal, foreign missionaries working here lament that the government restricts their numbers and treats the church as a nongovernmental organization \u2013 limitations that the Holy See is hoping will be lifted with a comprehensive bilateral agreement.<\/p>\n

In his remarks, Francis praised Mongolia\u2019s tradition of religious liberty, noting that such tolerance existed even during the period of the Mongol Empire\u2019s vast expansion over much of the world. At its height, the empire stretched as far west as Hungary to become the largest contiguous land empire in world history.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, the landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia and China is overwhelmingly Buddhist, with traditional links to Tibet\u2019s leading lamas, including the Dalai Lama.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that the empire could embrace such distant and varied lands over the centuries bears witness to the remarkable ability of your ancestors to acknowledge the outstanding qualities of the peoples present in its immense territory and to put those qualities at the service of a common development,\u201d Francis told the president, diplomats and cultural leaders in remarks at the state palace.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis model should be valued and reproposed in our own day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Referring to the 13th-century period of relative political stability within the Mongol Empire that allowed trade and travel to flourish, Francis called for such a period of fraternity and peace to take root today and spread peace throughout the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cMay heaven grant that today, on this earth devastated by countless conflicts, there be a renewal, respectful of international laws, of the condition of what was once the pax mongolica, that is the absence of conflicts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Khurelsukh also referred to the \u201cpax mongolica\u201d in his remarks, saying that same spirit still guides Mongolia\u2019s efforts to be a peaceful, multilateral player on the world stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAchievements of pax mongolica have created the solid grounds for the development of mutual respect between different nations of the world, cherishing each other\u2019s values and identities, enabling peaceful coexistence of various civilizations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Later in the day, Francis met with bishops and the missionaries who have cultivated the Catholic faith here for the past three decades, presiding over a prayer in the ger-shaped St. Peter and Paul cathedral in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. On the altar sat a delicate wooden statue of the Madonna, which was found by a Mongolese woman in a landfill and now is a symbol of the church in the country.<\/p>\n

As Francis entered and blessed the crowd with holy water, he was met with shouts of \u201cViva il Papa!\u201d inside and out of the cathedral, where an estimated 2,000 people gathered.<\/p>\n

Francis sought to encourage the missionaries, telling them not to be concerned by their \u201csmall numbers, limited successes or apparent irrelevance.\u201d Rather, he urged them to be close to their Mongolian flocks, learn their language and love their culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cMay you find refreshment, knowing that being little is not a problem but a resource,\u201d he said. \u201cGod loves littleness, and through it he loves to accomplish great things.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the pews was one of the two Mongolese priests who have been ordained, the Rev. Peter Sanjaajav, who got a rousing applause from the crowd when he addressed Francis in Mongolian.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany thanks for coming to Mongolia, and for visiting our Church. Your visit makes us particularly happy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another Mongolian woman who converted, Rufina Chamingerel, told Francis she had spent 14 years learning her Catholic faith, to which she converted as a student. Addressing Francis in Italian, she acknowledged the Mongolian church is young and small.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Church is in that phase typical of children who constantly ask their parents questions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In his remarks to government authorities, Francis also praised Mongolia\u2019s efforts to care for the environment. The vast, landlocked country, historically afflicted by weather extremes, is considered to be one of the countries most affected by climate change. The country has already experienced a 2.1-degree Celsius (3.8-degree Fahrenheit) increase in average temperatures over the past 70 years, and an estimated 77% of its land is degraded because of overgrazing and climate change, according to the U.N. Development Program.<\/p>\n

Mongolia is set to host the 2026 U.N. conference on desertification and has launched a campaign to plant 1 billion trees across its vast steppes and mountains of grasslands.<\/p>\n

The pope, however, noted the need to combat \u201cthe insidious threat of corruption,\u201d an apparent reference to a scandal over Mongolia\u2019s trade with China over the alleged theft of 385,000 tons of coal. In December, hundreds of people braved freezing cold temperatures in the capital to protest the scandal.<\/p>\n

\u201cCorruption is the fruit of a utilitarian and unscrupulous mentality that has impoverished whole countries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Mongolian government has declared 2023 to be an \u201canti-corruption year\u201d and says it is carrying out a five-part plan based on Transparency International, the global anti-graft watchdog that ranked Mongolia 116th last year in its corruption perceptions index.<\/p>\n

Mongolians Catholic and not welcomed Francis\u2019 visit, saying it was a sign of Mongolia\u2019s prominence on the world stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe visit of Roman pope is the proof that Mongolians are peace loving, mindful and spiritual nation,\u201d said Chinbat Gantulga, a Mongolian engineer.\u201dIt also shows that Mongolia has a religious freedom, and respect of spiritual beliefs of anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See has long had troubled relations in the region, with Russia to the north and China to the south<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31961"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}