Pope Francis wrapped up the first-ever papal visit to Mongolia on Monday by inaugurating a church-run homeless clinic and shelter, insisting that such initiatives aren’t aimed toward winning converts but are simply exercises in Christian charity.
Francis toured the House of Mercy, a three-story structure housed in an old-fashioned, which the local church has opened as an expression of the roots that it has taken within the three many years that the Catholic Church has had an official presence in Mongolia. It was the ultimate event of an historic four-day visit to a region where the Holy See has long sought to make inroads.
Several of the foreign-staffed Catholic religious orders in Mongolia run shelters, orphanages and nursing homes to take care of a population of three.3 million where one in three people lives in poverty. But the brand new clinic for homeless people, individuals with disabilities and victims of domestic violence is aimed toward showing the outreach of the Mongolian Catholic Church as an entire to its area people.
“The true progress of a nation shouldn’t be gauged by economic wealth, much less by investment within the illusory power of armaments, but by its ability to offer for the health, education and integral development of its people,” Francis said on the shelter, urging Mongolians wealthy and poor to volunteer to assist their fellow residents.
Currently, some 77 missionaries minister to Mongolia’s Catholics, who with around 1,450 people constitute considered one of the tiniest Catholic flocks on the planet. But only two Mongolian men have been ordained priests, and no Mongolian women have decided to hitch religious congregations as nuns.
These foreign missionaries say the largest challenge facing them is to cultivate a very local Mongolian church, with trained lay people who find themselves well inserted into the material of society. That, they hope, will eventually result in more religious vocations in order that foreign missionaries turn out to be less and fewer essential.
“We need to make this a church of Mongolia, one which has the flavour 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.
“There are 77 of us missionaries. We’re all great, all saints, everyone works well,” he said laughing. “But we’ve got to take into consideration making the local church grow, in order that the (Mongolian) people take their church in hand. Otherwise we colonize Mongolia anew, and that is mindless.”
In urging on a regular basis Mongolians to volunteer to assist the poor, Francis said charity work wasn’t only for the idle wealthy but for everybody. And he denied that Catholic charity was about winning recent converts.
“Another myth needing to be dispelled is that the Catholic Church, distinguished throughout the world for its great commitment to works of social promotion, does all this to proselytize, as if caring for others were a way of enticing people to ‘meet up,’” Francis said. “No! Christians do whatever they will to alleviate the suffering of the needy, because within the person of the poor they acknowledge Jesus, the Son of God, and in him the dignity of all and sundry.”
Francis’ comment was a tacit acknowledgement of the competition for souls in places like Mongolia, which banned religious remark during many years of Soviet-allied communist government. Now, religious freedom is enshrined within the Mongolian structure, and a wide range of Christian and evangelical churches have taken root here.
Some, reminiscent of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, boast a much larger presence in Mongolia and claim way more members than the Catholic Church. But in an indication that Catholics weren’t competing with the Mormons or other Christian churches, Francis invited their leaders to an interfaith meeting on Saturday in Ulaanbaatar to indicate their common concern for promoting a more peaceful and harmonious world.
In in search of to encourage Mongolia’s tiny Catholic flock, Francis has insisted that their small size doesn’t matter and that their success should not be measured in numbers. “God loves littleness, and thru it he loves to perform great things,” Francis told priests, nuns and bishops from across the region during a Saturday encounter within the cathedral.
Francis got here to Mongolia to present a word of hope to the young church, but additionally to make a geopolitically vital foray right into a troubled region for the Holy See, particularly given neighboring China’s crackdown on religious observance.
On Sunday, Francis gave a special shout-out to Chinese Catholics, issuing a warm word of greeting from the altar of Mass on the Steppe Arena.
On Monday, Oyunchimeg Tserendolgo, a social employee at a public school, brought a gaggle of her students to see Francis outside the shelter. She said she felt she had to come back see the pope though she herself isn’t Catholic.
“I wish for Roman pope to live a protracted life and to bring more goodness not only to Mongolia, but to the remaining of the world,” she said as she held a photograph of the pontiff. “When I heard that pope is leaving today, I had to come back here to pay my respects. I’m so glad I got a glimpse of him. Just so completely satisfied.”
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