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