Pope’s Mongolia visit continues centuries-old mission
Exchanges between Vatican, khan took place in 13th century
VATICAN CITY — When Pope Francis travels to Mongolia this week, he will in some ways be completing a mission begun by the 13thcentury Pope Innocent IV, who dispatched emissaries east to ascertain the intentions of the rapidly expanding Mongol Empire and beseech its leaders to halt the bloodshed and convert.
Those medieval exchanges between Roman pope and Mongolian khan were full of bellicose demands for submission and conversion, with each side claiming to be acting in the name of God, according to texts of surviving letters.
But the exchanges also showed mutual respect at a time when the Catholic Church was waging Crusades and the Mongol Empire was conquering lands as far west as Hungary in what would become the largest contiguous land empire in world history.
Some 800 years later, Francis won’t be testing new diplomatic waters or seeking to proselytize Mongolia’s mostly Buddhist people when he arrives Friday in the capital Ulaanbaatar for a four-day visit.
His trip is a historic meeting of East and West, the first-ever visit by a Roman pontiff to Mongolia to minister to one of the tiniest, newest Catholic communities in the world.
“In a way, what’s happened is that both sides have moved on,” said Christopher Atwood, professor of Mongolian and Chinese frontier and ethnic history at the University of Pennsylvania. “Once upon a time, it was either/or: Either the world was ruled by the pope, or the world was ruled by the Mongol Empire. And now I think both sides are much more tolerant.”
Officially, there are 1,450 Catholics in Mongolia and the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence since 1992, after Mongolia shrugged off its
Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution. Francis last year upped the Mongolian church’s standing when he made a cardinal out of its leader, the Italian missionary Giorgio Marengo.
“It is amazing (for the pope) to come to a country that is not known to the world for its Catholicism,” said Uugantsetseg Tungalag, a Catholic who works with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in a nursing home in the capital. “When the pope visits us, other countries will learn that it has been 30 years since Catholicism came to Mongolia.”
The Mongol Empire under its famed founder Genghis Khan was known for tolerating people of different faiths among those it conquered, and Francis will likely emphasize that tradition of religious coexistence when he presides over an interfaith meeting Sunday. It was, after all, one of Genghis Khan’s descendants, Kublai Khan, who welcomed Marco Polo into his court in Mongol-ruled China, providing the Venetian merchant with the experiences that would give Europe one of the best written accounts of Asia, its culture, geography and people.
Invited to Francis’ interfaith event are Mongolian Buddhists, Jewish, Muslim and Shinto representatives as well as members of Christian churches that have established a presence in Mongolia in the last 30 years, including the Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints, which officially claims more than 12,500 members in Mongolia in 22 congregations.
In a message to Mongolians, Francis emphasized their interfaith traditions and said he was traveling to the “heart of Asia” as a brother to all.
“It is a much-desired visit, which will be an opportunity to embrace a Church that is small in number, but vibrant in faith and great in charity; and also to meet at close quarters a noble, wise people, with a strong religious tradition that I will have the honor of getting to know, especially in the context of an interreligious event,” Francis said Sunday.
Aside from the historic first, Francis’ trip holds great geopolitical import: With Mongolia sandwiched between China and Russia, Francis will be traveling to a region that has long been one of the thorniest for the Holy See to negotiate.
Francis will fly through Chinese airspace in both directions, allowing him a rare opportunity to send an official telegram of greetings to President Xi Jinping at a time when Vatican-Chinese relations are once again strained over the nomination of Chinese bishops.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s crackdown on religious minorities grind on, Francis will be visiting a relatively neutral player but one that is striving to show its regional importance in the shadow of its two powerful neighbors, said Manduhai Buyandelger, a professor of anthropology at MIT and a Mongolia scholar.
“I think Mongolia is a very safe arena for the pope to land to demonstrate his outreach, as well as to show Mongolia’s belonging on equal stage with the rest of the world,” she said from Ulaanbaatar.
Mongolia’s environmental precariousness, climate shocks and the increasing desertification of its land are likely to be raised by the pope, given he has made combating climate change and addressing its impact on vulnerable peoples a priority of his 10-year pontificate.
Mongolia, a vast, landlocked country historically afflicted by weather extremes, is considered one of the most affected by climate change. The country has already experienced a 3.8-degree 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.
The cycles of dry, hot summers followed by harsh, snowy winters are particularly devastating for Mongolia’s nomadic herders, since their livestock are less able to fatten up on grass in summer, said Nicola Di Cosmo, a Mongolian historian and professor of East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Already, many of Mongolia’s herders, who comprised about a third of the population of 3.3 million, have abandoned their traditional livelihoods to settle around Mongolia’s capital, straining social services.