Pope Francis ended a four-day visit to Mongolia on Monday with the opening of a social center, ensuring that the initiative of the Catholic Church is for charity and not for evangelization.
The 86-year-old pontiff went to the House of Charity, a place of shelter and help for the homeless and victims of domestic violence, in a poor neighborhood of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, a country that records that it lives on 36 % of the population. below the poverty line.
In an old abandoned building in the Bayangol neighborhood, Francis recalled that “the first missionaries arrived in Ulan Bator in the 1990s, they immediately felt the call to charity.”
After seeing some young people with disabilities singing and dancing, the Pope assured that it was the Mongolian government that asked the Catholic Church for help to respond to some social emergencies.
The pontiff affirmed that it is necessary to dismantle the myth “that the Catholic Church, which stands out in the world for its great commitment to works of social promotion, does all this for proselytism, as if taking care of others was a way of convincing and getting them on your side.”
On Saturday, Francis had said that governments “have nothing to fear” from the Catholic Church, in a comment that was understood to be directed at China.
“The governments […] “We have nothing to fear from the evangelizing action of the Church, because the Church does not have a political agenda to follow,” said the pontiff in the cathedral of Ulan Bator.
China, which borders Mongolia, does not recognize the pope’s authority over the country’s Catholics, who are subservient to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a state body founded in 1957.
China also has no diplomatic relations with the Vatican, which is the only state in Europe with formal ties to Taiwan.
Beijing considers Taiwan a province of China and threatens to invade the island if Taipei declares its independence.
Despite the clashes, the Vatican and China last year renewed an agreement on the issue of appointing Chinese bishops.
On Saturday, in the huge Sukhbaatar square, which houses the heart of Mongolian power in Ulaanbaatar, more than a thousand faithful and curious awaited the arrival of the Pope.
To avoid being identified, many of the Chinese who crossed the border to see the pope covered their heads, hiding their faces behind surgical masks and sunglasses.
“We have to be discreet and, above all, not say that we are here for the Pope,” a Chinese woman told AFP, who declined to be named.
“Many Catholics in China wanted to come but couldn’t. We are blessed,” said another Chinese, who also asked not to be named for fear of reprisals in China.
According to international agencies, no bishop from mainland China will be allowed to travel to Mongolia during the Pope’s visit.
Francis’s visit was attended only by the former Chinese cardinal and emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, John Tong Hon, and the current bishop, Stephen Chow, who will be made a cardinal by the pope at the end of September.
Source: TSF
