In an article first published on The Conversation, scholar of Roman Catholicism KRISTY NABHAN-WARREN looks at what Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to the East Asian nation reveals…
Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Mongolia, which is home to fewer than 1,500 Catholics, has elicited curiosity among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
This will be the Pope’s 43rd trip abroad since his election on 13th March, 2013: He has visited 12 countries in the Americas, 11 in Asia and 10 in Africa.
What do these visits tell us about this Pope’s mission and focus?
Pope Francis gestures on the day he meets with aid and charity representatives at “Centro Paroquial de Serafina” during his apostolic journey to Portugal on the occasion of the XXXVII World Youth Day, in Lisbon, Portugal, on 4th August, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Violeta Santos Moura/File photo
As a scholar of Roman Catholicism, I have studied Catholicism’s appeal for immigrants and refugees, and I argue that the pontiff’s official travels since 2013 are part of his decadelong effort to rebrand the Roman Catholic Church as a religious institution that centres the poor.
Prioritising the poor
While previous popes have included the poor in their speeches, what has distinguished this Pope is that he has focused on the Global South and prioritised immigrants, refugees and the less privileged, from Bolivia to Myanmar to Mongolia.
At his July, 2013, visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa to commemorate migrants who had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, Francis gave a blistering critique of the world’s failure to care for the poor: “In this globalised world, we have fallen into globalised indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!”
Three years later, the Pope flew 12 Syrian Muslim refugees from a Greek refugee camp to Rome. Francis is the first pope to relocate refugees and to work with groups like The Community of St Egidio charity in Rome that have successfully resettled thousands of refugees.
During my own interviews with Central American Catholic immigrants and refugees in central and eastern Iowa between 2013-2020 for my book, Meatpacking America, I heard from women and men who fled violence and poverty in their home nations that they look up to this pope “because he cares about us,” as Fernando said. And Josefina told me back in 2017 that this Pope is “the real deal” in terms of supporting immigrants and the poor.
Francis and liberation theology
His predecessors – Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict – specifically condemned liberation theology, a philosophy rooted in Catholic social teachings that calls for a preferential option for the poor and an embrace of Marxist ideology.
According to Austen Ivereigh prior to his becoming Pope, Francis – then Jorge Mario Bergoglio – condemned liberation theology as well. He would say “that they were for the people but never with them,” wrote Ivereigh, in his biography of Pope Francis.
Since his election as Pope, however, Francis has undertaken what I call “people-focused” liberationism. In one of his first official announcements in 2013, Evangelii Gaudium, or The Joy of the Gospel, the Pope wrote about the essential inclusion of the poor in society, arguing that “without the preferential option for the poor, the proclamation of the Gospel, which is itself the prime form of charity, risks being misunderstood or submerged by the ocean of words which daily engulfs us in today’s society of mass communications.”
In other words, the Gospel’s message that all Christians proclaim doesn’t mean a whole lot if the poor are not central to the goal of personal as well as collective salvation.
Journeying to Mongolia
How does the Pope’s upcoming visit to Mongolia factor into this decade-spanning trajectory of his people-focused liberation?
Christianity has been present in Mongolia since the seventh century. Nestorianism, an Eastern branch of Christianity named after the Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, who lived from 386 CE to 451 CE, coexisted alongside an even older religious practice, shamanism, which emphasised the natural world and dates to the third century. Nestorians believe that Christ had two natures – one human and one divine.
While Mary was seen as important within Nestorian theology as Christ’s mother, she is not seen as divine. This is similar to Roman Catholic theology where Mary is deemed special because she is Christ’s mother and worthy of veneration.
We rely on our readers to fund Sight's work - become a financial supporter today!
For more information, head to our Subscriber's page.
According to historian Robert Merrihew Adams, the missionary activity of Nestorian Christians in central Asia from the seventh to the 13th centuries was “the most impressive Christian enterprise” of the Middle Ages because of its rapid spread and influence.
Adams argues that Nestorianism’s spread was in part because of its belief that Christ was a two-natured individual – one divine and one human. These two natures in one body meshed well with preexisting shamanic beliefs, as shamanism sees individuals as able to harness the supernatural.
In addition to this branch of Eastern Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism came to Mongolia in the 13th century, as did Islam. Today, Buddhism is the dominant religion of Mongolia, while Islam and Christianity remain very small percentages at three per cent and 2.5 per cent.
Pope Francis has made it clear throughout his tenure that interfaith dialogue is an essential remedy to division. During his visit he will preside over an interfaith gathering and the opening of a Catholic charity house.
A strategic visit
The past decade has brought rapid urbanisation and growth in major cities such as the capital of Ulaanbaatar, along with high rates of unemployment and Covid-era economic downturn.
And yet, according to the World Bank, the economic forecast for Mongolia remains “promising” because of its rich natural resources, such as gold, copper, coal and other minerals.
However, extraction of Mongolia’s resources is occurring at a rapid pace – so much so that the country, according to the Harvard International Review, has been called “Minegolia”. The United States has made significant investment in Mongolia’s mining industry, and China is a major importer of Mongolian coal. Two rail lines connecting Mongolia to China were installed in January, 2022, and a third is being built.
In the past, Francis has made strong comments against corruption and environmental degradation, and it would not be surprising if he addressed the challenges of the mining industry during his trip. During his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, he critiqued the Global North that contributed to “the poison of greed” that has “smeared its diamonds with blood”. In 2018, the Pope spent a few hours in Madre de Dios, an area in the Peruvian Amazon, where mining has led to large-scale environmental degradation.
The Pope’s visit will be bold given the challenges before Mongolia and its geographic location between Russia and China. A peace delegation on behalf of Pope Francis for the war in Ukraine, led by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, that visted Russia this summer is likely to head to China in the coming months.
As Italian Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, a missionary in Mongolia for two decades, has emphasised, Pope Francis’s visit to this country with a tiny minority of Catholics will “manifest the attention that the [Pope] has for every individual, every person who embarks in this journey of faith.”
Kristy Nabhan-Warren is associate vice president of research at University of Iowa. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
