austraLasia #4596

A great gift for the Salesians for the New Year 2018

By Fr. Anthony Kishore Minj SDB

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 31 December 2017 -- In the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar the capital city of Mongolia in Shovoo village, a new Salesian parish under the name “Holy Family” was erected by the Mongolian prefecture on December 30, 2018.

Fr. Mario Gasper Santosh SDB has been installed as the first parish priest by His Excellency Wenceslao Padilla, the bishop of Mongolia. There were around 200 hundred people witnessed this great event from all over prefecture, including 10 Salesians, other religious and priests etc. To mark the day, also there were baptism of 7 people youth and adults.

The parish has more than 60 Catholics. The Shovoo village was given by the government to run social work and also church activities around 10 years ago. It was started by ICM sisters, later it was handed over to prefecture. A year ago it was given to Salesians. Since then Salesians have been running a kindergarten, an unofficial parish and farms in the summer time and many other social works.

The village has around 10 to 15 thousand populations with full of mountainous view and river surroundings. In the winter snow covers the land and in summer green pasture surrounds the entire land and there is full of life everywhere. It is very captivating with simple people living in this area, easy for evangelization and other development works.

It is a great gift for the Salesians for the New Year 2018. We thank God for giving such a gift to spread his good news and serve His people