Pope begins Mongolia go to by praising the nation’s non secular freedom courting again to Genghis Khan

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — Pope Francis on Saturday praised Mongolia’s custom of spiritual freedom courting to the occasions of its founder, Genghis Khan, as he opened the first-ever papal go to to the Asian nation with a plea for peace and an finish to the “insidious threat of corruption.”

Francis met with President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh inside a standard Mongolian ger, or spherical yurt, arrange contained in the state palace, and wrote a message within the visitor ebook that he was visiting Mongolia, “a country young and ancient, modern and rich of tradition,” as a pilgrim of peace.

Francis is visiting Mongolia to minister to its tiny Catholic group of 1,450 folks and make a diplomatic foray right into a area the place the Holy See has lengthy had troubled relations, with Russia to the north and China to the south.

While Christianity has been current within the area for tons of of years, the Catholic Church has solely had a sanctioned presence in Mongolia since 1992, after the nation deserted its Soviet-allied communist authorities and enshrined non secular freedom in its structure.

In his remarks, Francis praised Mongolia’s custom of spiritual liberty, noting that such tolerance existed even throughout the interval of the Mongol Empire’s huge growth over a lot of the world. At its peak, the empire stretched as far west as Hungary to turn out to be the most important contiguous land empire in world historical past. Nowadays, the landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia and China is overwhelmingly Buddhist, with conventional hyperlinks to Tibet’s main lamas, together with the Dalai Lama.

“The fact that the empire could embrace such distant and varied lands over the centuries bears witness to the remarkable ability of your ancestors to acknowledge the outstanding qualities of the peoples present in its immense territory and to put those qualities at the service of a common development,” Francis advised the president, diplomats and cultural leaders in remarks on the state palace.

“This model should be valued and re-proposed in our own day,” he mentioned.

Referring to the Thirteenth-century interval of relative political stability inside the Mongol Empire that allowed commerce and journey to flourish, Francis referred to as for such a interval of fraternity and peace to take root in the present day.

“May heaven grant that today, on this earth devastated by countless conflicts, there be a renewal, respectful of international laws, of the condition of what was once the pax mongolica, that is the absence of conflicts,” he mentioned.

Khurelsukh additionally referred to the “pax mongolica” in his remarks, saying that very same spirit nonetheless guides Mongolia’s efforts to be a peaceable, multilateral participant on the world stage.

“Achievements of pax mongolica have created the solid grounds for the development of mutual respect between different nations of the world, cherishing each other’s values and identities, enabling peaceful coexistence of various civilizations,” he mentioned.

Francis famous that he was giving the president an authenticated copy of the letter that the then-ruler of the Mongol Empire, Guyuk Khan, wrote to Pope Innocent IV in 1246 after the pontiff despatched emissaries east in search of to know the intentions of the vastly advancing empire.

According to a translated copy of the letter reproduced within the 1955 ebook “The Mongol Mission,” Guyuk indicated he didn’t perceive the pope’s request that he convert to Christianity and insisted that God was on his aspect, commanding his troops to beat.

“Though thou likewise sayest that I should become a trembling Nestorian Christian, worship God and be an ascetic, how knowest thou whom God absolves, in truth to whom He shows mercy?” he wrote, in accordance with the interpretation. “From the rising of the sun to its setting, all the lands have been made subject to me. Who could do this contrary to the command of God?”

In his remarks, Francis additionally praised Mongolia’s efforts to take care of the setting. The huge, landlocked nation, traditionally troubled by climate extremes, is taken into account to be one of many nations most affected by local weather change. The nation has already skilled a 2.1-degree Celsius (3.8-degree Fahrenheit) enhance in common temperatures over the previous 70 years, and an estimated 77% of its land is degraded due to overgrazing and local weather change, in accordance with the United Nations Development Program.

Mongolia is ready to host the 2026 U.N. convention on desertification and has launched a marketing campaign to plant 1 billion timber throughout its huge steppes and mountains of grasslands.

“You help us to appreciate and carefully cultivate what we Christians consider to be God’s creation, the fruit of his benevolent design, and to combat the effects of human devastation by a culture of care and foresight reflected in responsible ecological policies,” Francis mentioned.

The pope, nonetheless, famous the necessity to fight corruption, an obvious reference to a scandal over Mongolia’s commerce with China over the alleged theft of 385,000 tons of coal. In December, tons of of individuals braved freezing chilly temperatures within the capital to protest the scandal.

“Corruption is the fruit of a utilitarian and unscrupulous mentality that has impoverished whole countries,” he mentioned. “It is a sign of a vision that fails to look up to the sky and flees the vast horizons of fraternity, becoming instead self-enclosed and concerned with its own interests alone.”

He mentioned religions specifically can characterize a safeguard in opposition to the “insidious threat of corruption, which effectively represents a serious menace to the development of any human community.”

The Mongolian authorities has declared 2023 to be an “anti-corruption year” and says it’s finishing up a five-part plan based mostly on Transparency International, the worldwide anti-graft watchdog that ranked Mongolia 116th final yr in its corruption perceptions index.

Later Saturday, Francis was to satisfy with the clergymen and missionaries who are likely to the nation’s tiny Catholic group on the capital’s St. Peter and Paul Cathedral.

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