Several of the foreign-staffed Catholic religious orders in Mongolia run shelters, orphanages and nursing homes to care for a population of 3.3 million where one in three people lives in poverty.
But the new clinic for homeless people, people with disabilities and victims of domestic violence is aimed at showing the outreach of the Mongolian Catholic Church as a whole to its local community.
"We have to make this a church of Mongolia, one that has the flavor of this land, of its steppes, of its sheep, goats, of its ger," said the Rev. Ernesto Viscardi, an Italian priest of the Consolata missionary order who has been based in Mongolia for 19 years. Francis' comment was a tacit acknowledgement of the competition for souls in places like Mongolia, which banned religious observation during decades of Soviet-allied communist government. Now, religious freedom is enshrined in the Mongolian constitution, and a variety of Christian and evangelical churches have taken root here.
Francis came to Mongolia to give a word of hope to the young church, but also to make a geopolitically important foray into a troubled region for the Holy See, particularly given neighboring China's crackdown on religious observance.
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