Journey to discover the small Catholic community of Mongolia, where Pope Francis will arrive on August 31st. A country that is rebuilding its identity after 70 years of communism and the difficult democratic transition
Father Ernesto jokes with a child sitting next to his grandfather on the bus jammed in traffic on Chinggis Avenue, in the center of Ulan Bator. Traffic jams at rush hour are a constant in the Mongolian capital, the protagonist of an urban growth that is as rapid as it is disorderly. Crossing the city, which in thirty years has tripled its population to reach one million and 700 thousand inhabitants, the buildings under construction follow one another without stopping: headquarters of companies and banks, shopping malls and an infinite number of tall residential buildings that often they replace the barracks of the Soviet era, desolate but with at least the advantage of always rising next to vast courtyards and schools for children.
«Today, on the other hand, new houses are springing up everywhere but then there is a lack of adequate parking and roads: getting around is a challenge of skill!». Father Ernesto Viscardi, born in 1951, indicates with his arm the neighborhoods that flow out the window, and which from August 31st to September 4th will welcome Pope Francis during his historic visit to a young and tiny Church. The priest, from Bergamo from Villa d’Almè, knows them very well. In 2004 he arrived in Mongolia to join the small group of Consolata missionaries who the previous year had established a presence in a land made up of extremes, starting with the climatic ones, intent on rediscovering an identity after the democratic transition that followed seventy years of communism.
«An identity that is being reconstituted around some key elements: the territory, the myth of the great leader Genghis Khan, who at the beginning of the 1200s managed to bring together the riotous Mongol tribes to make an army that would conquer a territory extending from Korea to Poland, and then the Buddhist tradition», says Father Ernesto. During the long era of symbiosis with the Soviet giant, spirituality had been forcibly banned from daily life: following the purges that began in 1937, thousands of temples were destroyed, Buddhist monasteries expropriated, at least 15,000 lamas massacred.
The bus crosses the Peace Bridge built in the 1950s by China, Mongolia’s other cumbersome neighbor, and heads towards the central square, overlooked by the seat of government and where protests by exasperated citizens periodically take place from corrupt politics and the rising cost of living: here two thirds of the inhabitants experience some form of poverty. And it is enough to look up beyond the glass skyscrapers of the center towards the hills surrounding the capital to see where a large part of these poor people live: the landscape on the uphill walls is dotted with white specks. Getting closer, as the bus climbs less busy roads, it becomes clear that it is about gerthe traditional tents of nomadic shepherds.
“In recent years, more and more families from the steppes have chosen to move to the capital, in search of a less harsh lifestyle or following the loss of livestock due to particularly harsh winters”, explains the missionary. «Very few, however, can afford a brick apartment». The others simply pitch their tent where they find a piece of free land: i ger districtlacking sewers and access to running water, are home to over half of Ulan Bator’s entire population.
In the traditional tents, microcosms in which the space is meticulously organized according to the symbols of the shamanic culture, the Catholic mission in contemporary Mongolia also had its origin in a certain sense, after Christianity, which arrived with the Nestorian Church in the eighth century, it had disappeared for hundreds of years. In 1992, a few months after the approval of the new Constitution which guaranteed freedom of expression and religion, a group of three missionaries from the Belgian congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary settled in Ulan Bator. Among them was the Filipino priest Wenceslao Padilla, appointed superior of the then independent mission (apostolic prefecture since 2002), who immediately dedicated himself to the homeless, the disabled, the elderly and above all to street children, who swarmed the streets of the city during the harsh economic crisis after the fall of communism. When, a few years later, work began on the construction of the cathedral, they were inspired by the structure of one ger: the church, next to which today also stands the St. Mary clinic for the poor, has a round shape, a low conical dome and, inside, a wooden radial ceiling.
More than twenty years ago, a real tent housed the first reception facility founded by the Salesians, who today also manage a large training school in which two hundred male and female students learn a trade. In the spacious classrooms of the Don Bosco School the boys are intent on following sewing workshops and secretarial courses, while in the mechanical workshop two young men tinker around an engine.
“For those who come from the countryside without professional skills, life in the capital becomes very difficult,” explains Father Paul Leung, a Salesian originally from Hong Kong who runs the institute. «Thanks to our courses, on the other hand, young people have no difficulty in finding a job». Some of them have become teachers at the Don Bosco School. And someone has chosen to be baptized. “At school, the State forbids talking about religion – clarifies Father Paul – but we convey Christian values in everyday life, or in the traditional Salesian morning “good morning” meeting. Thus, there are those who then decide to go deeper, perhaps starting to attend catechism in one of the parishes”.
In these first three decades of missionary presence, those born in Ulan Bator are six. Others have sprung up in Erdenet, Darkhan and Arvaikheer (where the church is still one ger). From this commitment to initial proclamation, currently carried out by 77 priests, consecrated brothers, religious and lay people, a small Church has flourished which today has about 1,500 baptized people, many of whom are active as catechists, educators, members of choirs, volunteers charitable.
In the parish of Hagia Sophia, which stands in Bayanhushuu in the middle of a ger district, where the dirt roads turn into steep swamps when it rains, every Thursday a group of teenagers joins the parish priest, Father Thomas Ro Sangmin to go and distribute food to families who live on the edge of a landfill. Like the young priest, the gift of faith of the diocese of Daejeon, a good part of the missionaries present in Mongolia today come from South Korea: as many as 23.
In addition to the sign of an interesting cultural proximity – here music, TV series, Korean gastronomy are rampant -, it is the testimony of an active and “outgoing” Church of which the beautiful school founded in the same district is also an example by the nuns of Saint Paul de Chartres. During our visit, the students are preparing for the end-of-year recital: the children of the Montessori kindergarten rehearse a dance show on stage, while a group of high school students practice for the performance with the morin khuurthe traditional horse head fiddle.
But the Church, in Mongolia, really comes from the four corners of the world: 27 countries surveyed. Among the Missionaries of Charity who welcome needy elderly people there are Indians, Bangladeshis, Rwandans; the head of Caritas, Sister Anna Waturu is Kenyan, while Europe, Africa and Latin America are represented among her fathers and the Consolata nuns. Sister Esperanza Becerra Medina is originally from Colombia, and every day she reaches Chingeltej, a suburban district inhabited by low-income families where unemployment and alcoholism often go hand in hand.
“Here we founded the Consolata Mandah Naran library, that is, ‘rising sun’, a space for children and adolescents to study and socialize”, says the nun as she distributes bowls full of yoghurt to the boys. «We always offer a hearty snack, as well as an adequately heated place during the long winters». An important detail, when temperatures drop to 40 degrees below zero.
“Lately, with a small group of teenagers we have also started a simple program of approach to the Christian faith”, says Sister Esperanza. That’s right, through the spontaneous testimony of life, the first two local vocations have also been born in Mongolia in recent years: Father Joseph Enkh-Baatar was ordained a priest in 2016, while two years ago it was the turn of Father Peter Sanjajav, today 38 years old.
“When I arrived from Arvaikheer as a child with my mother, brother and sister, it was the nuns of Mother Teresa who welcomed us,” he says. «We came from a very poor background and I had never studied. But, thanks to their dedication, I learned to read and write at the age of fifteen». It was then Father Kim Stephano Seon Hyeon, the gift of faith South Korean suddenly disappeared in May, to take care of him for years. «One day I asked him point-blank: ‘But who makes you do this? Come here, far from your country, in this cold, to take care of us?”. In response, he showed me the crucifix».
From that day on, a seed slipped into Peter’s heart. And, over time, it would germinate: years of seminary in South Korea, difficulties with studies and an unknown language, «but I didn’t throw in the towel, as the nuns had taught me. When I became a priest, all my family members, even the Buddhist ones, were happy for me because they saw my joy. Today my story helps me to be a bridge between different cultures and experiences, alongside those in search». From steppes to skyscrapers.