VATICAN Pope Francis in Mongolia from August 31 to September 4

The date of the trip to the country located between China and Russia where only a few hundred Catholics live was officially announced. In the meeting with the Pontifical Mission Societies of the whole world, the pontiff invited today not to exclude anyone from the proclamation of the joy of the Gospel: “Go everyone. And don’t reduce your commitment to raising money.”

Vatican City () – From August 31 to September 4, Pope Francis will visit Mongolia, the Church’s missionary frontier in Asia, where the Catholic community has just 1,300 faithful throughout the country. The apostolic visit – which had been announced by Francis himself in February, during the press conference on the return flight from South Sudan – was confirmed today with a statement from the director of the Vatican Press Office, Matteo Bruni, where it is explained that the pontiff has accepted the invitation of the president of Mongolia and the local ecclesial authorities and that the travel program and further details will be announced in the coming weeks.

Francis had already shown his attention to this small Catholic community, which resurfaced only thirty years ago, when in 2022 he decided to include the prefect of Ulan Bator – Fr. Giorgio Marengo, Italian missionary of the Consolata – among the new cardinals. In the current scenario, however, the trip takes on particular significance due to the geographical location of Mongolia, a country situated at the crossroads between Russia and China.

In any case, the theme of the mission will be the center of this apostolic visit. In we recently told the story of the Korean missionary priest Kim Stephano Seong Hyeon, Vicar General of Ulan Bator, who died suddenly at the age of 55, after spending twenty years in this borderland proclaiming the Gospel. And precisely today Francis spoke again about the call to bring Jesus to all, without excluding anyone, during the audience in the Vatican to the delegations that are participating these days in the Assembly of the Pontifical Mission Societies, the body that supports the work of evangelization of the Church throughout the world.

“At this historic moment, as we carry out the synodal process,” the Pope told them, “it is important to remember that the Christian community is missionary by its very nature. Indeed, every Christian has received the gift of the Holy Spirit and is sent to continue the work of Jesus, announcing to all the joy of the Gospel and bringing his consolation to the various situations of our often wounded history.

“Missionary nature is not something natural – he went on to say -. In a natural way we always look for comfort, for everything to be in order… It was necessary for the Holy Spirit to come to create that terrible “disorder” that was the morning of Pentecost, because the Spirit, to create the missionary spirit, to create the Church life creates disorder, but then builds harmony. Both are from the Holy Spirit.”

“When the Lord tells us about that wedding party (cf. Mt 22,1-14), which went wrong because the guests did not come – he explained – what does the Lord say? Go out to the crossroads and invite everyone you meet: healthy and sick, bad, good, sinners… everyone. That is the heart of the mission: that ‘everyone’. Without excluding anyone. All our mission, therefore, is born from the Heart of Christ to allow Him to draw everyone to himself. And this is the mystical and missionary spirit of Blessed Pauline Maria Jaricot, founder of the Work for the Propagation of the Faith, that she was so devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Finally, the pontiff once again addressed a special recommendation to the missionary world: “Please – he said – do not reduce the Pontifical Mission Societies to money. It is a means, money is needed. But we cannot reduce them to that. They are something bigger than money. Because if spirituality is missing and it’s just a company to get money, corruption immediately arrives. And we have seen that even today in the newspapers stories of alleged corruption are published in the name of the missionary nature of the Church.