3013 Church in Mongolia gearing up for celebrations
austraLasia #3013

Church in Mongolia gearing up for celebrations
ULAANBAATAR: 9 February 2012 -- The Catholic Church will be celebrating 20 years in Mongolia soon - in April - to mark the beginnings of the Missio Sui Iuris in 1992, following establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Mongolian Government that year. “God has done great things for us, and we are glad!” said Bishop Wenceslao Padilla, apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, as he took stock of the lessons this period will have for the future.

The Filipino prelate from the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM) arrived with two confreres in 1992 to open the Mongolian mission. Today, 64 missioners from 18 countries belonging to nine religious congregations and a Korean diocese, together with six lay missioners from three countries, serve the local Church.

For want of accurate statistics, the number of Catholics in the country is estimated to be between 500-700, probably closer to the latter.

“We are establishing a local Church, but most of the pastoral agents of the apostolic prefecture are foreigners.” For this reason “it is high time to encourage vocation, animation and recruitment in the parishes among the baptised youth,” Bishop Padilla has said. A lesson he says the Church has learned has to do with missioners’ “over-indulgence” in social, developmental, educational, and charitable projects, which “should be balanced by strengthening the involvement in spiritual activities.”

The Catholic Mission in Mongolia now has four parishes. They are Sts Peter and Paul, St Mary’s, Good Shepherd and Mary Help of Christians, a Salesian Parish, which was added in January 2007 in Darkhan, Mongolia’s second-largest city with 80,000 inhabitants, 200 kilometres north of the capital.

The Salesians began thier mission in Mongolia in 2001 and set up the much-appreciated Don Bosco Technical Skills Center in Ulaanbaatar. From 2004 there was at least an unofficial presence in Darkhan, but it was formally set up under Salesian administration in 2007 as a parish and another Don Bosco Center was established. The number of Catholics initially was nil! A single room was set aside as a chapel for catechumens and the regular celebration of Mass, then as numbers grew into the hundreds, the Salesians purchased an abandoned ice cream factory nearby and used that as a church.  Now they have gone a long way towards building the Church of Maria Auxilium, after the turning of the first sod on 24 May last year.

Last year, the Don Bosco Casket did not go to Mongolia, instead, since the mission belongs to Vietnam Province, Bishop Padilla, Fr Andrew Tin (Salesian Delegate) and a number of others, came to Vietnam at the time the Casket was visiting there.