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.