Visiting Catholic minorities is part of the pope’s policy of drawing attention to people and problems.
VATICAN CITY: Mongolia’s Catholics – all 1,450 of them – could be squeezed standing into St Peter’s Basilica dozens of times over and their number is smaller than the congregation of a small parish in some small towns.Essentially, to paraphrase British climber George Mallory’s response in the 1920s as to why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, because the Catholics are there.
Visiting places where Catholics are a minority is part of Francis’ policy of drawing attention to people and problems in what he has called the peripheries of society and of the world.Francis, who will be attending an inter-religious service in Mongolia, said at his weekly noon address yesterday that he would be visiting “a Church that is small in numbers but vivacious in faith”.
“This shows how for him , every single member of the faithful is important,” said Marengo, who has been a missionary in Mongolia for more than 20 years. About 60% of Mongolians identify as religious. Among those, 87.1% are Buddhist, 5.4% Muslim, 4.2% Shamanist, 2.2% Christian, and 1.1% followers of other religions, according to the US state department.“I wanted to show the world that there is a Catholic Church 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.
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