Imagine a country the size of Western Europe, with only three million inhabitants spread over an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres: steppes that extend to where they reach the sight, deserts of sand and stone, snowy mountains, rivers that cross uncovered solages. A country where the cold can reach 40 degrees below zero in January, where nomadic pastors raise their yurta - their gives- in one afternoon and they pick it up in another. A Buddhist country since the 13th century, shamanic since before there was written history.

Now, imagine that in 1990 there was not a single Catholic baptized. Not one. And that today, thirty-five years later, there is a small living Church, with its parishes, its seminars, its religious communities, its bishop, and at the centre of all this, as has always been in the history of evangelization, the figure of the Virgin Mary.

This is the history of the world's youngest Church in the lone country on earth.

The year it all started: 1990

On 26 January 1990, Mongolia held its first free political demonstration. The communist regime that had ruled the country since 1921 - satealized by the Soviet Union, which had monitored the violent elimination of Buddhism in the 1930s with the execution of more than seventeen thousand monks - began to fall apart. The first multi-party elections were held in August 1990. A new constitution was adopted in 1992 to guarantee religious freedom.

For the missionaries who had been waiting for that opportunity for years, the signal was immediate.

The first to arrive were the Missionaries of Consolata, an Italian congregation founded in Turin in 1901 by Blessed Giuseppe Allamano. Father Wenceslao Padilla, a missionary of Filipino origin, was one of the pioneers. He arrived in Ulaanbaatar in early 1992 with virtually no Mongolian knowledge, no money, no infrastructure, no parishioners. He had a rosary, a Bible and the certainty that if the Virgin had accompanied the missionaries in so many other difficult places, she would not leave him in the steppes of Mongolia.

Father Padilla and the first parish

Wenceslao Padilla arrived in Ulaanbaatar at a time when the city - the capital, with almost half of the country's population - was a set of grey buildings of Soviet concrete and gers nomads planted in the suburbs, mixed with apartment blocks in a way that had no equivalent in any other city in the world.

The first Catholic Mass in Mongolia in the 20th century was held on June 7, 1992, in a small apartment borrowed by a local collaborator. Four people attended: Father Padilla, two more missionaries and an interpreter. There was no holy water. There was no silver chalice. There was bread, wine, the words of the consecration and, in a corner of the apartment, a small image of the Virgin that Padilla had brought from Rome.

In 1996, the Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar was officially established. Padilla was appointed his first apostolic prefect. By that time, the Catholic community of Mongolia already had several hundred baptized and a first parish, dedicated to the saints Peter and Paul, in the neighborhood of Ulaanbaatar.

El Avemaría en mongol: «Bayarlag Egch Mari»

One of the most delicate challenges of evangelization in Mongolia was the translation of prayers into Mongolian. It is not a trivial task: Mongol is a binding language, with a radically different grammatical structure from European languages, and with a wealth of nuances that does not always have direct equivalents in traditional liturgical languages.

La traducción del Avemaría —la oración central de la devoción mariana, la que estructura el Rosario— planteó en concreto una pregunta delicada: ¿cómo traducir el vocativo «María»? En mongol, el saludo más natural para una mujer de rango superior combina el nombre con un término de parentesco: egch (older sister, with the respect that this relationship implies in Mongolian culture). Thus was born the Avemaría Mongol:

Баярлаг эгч Мари, нигүүлслээр дүүрэн,
Эзэн чамтайгаа оршино…
Bayarlag egch Mari, nigüülsleer düüren, Ezen chamtaigaa orsino…
Alégrate, hermana mayor María, llena de gracia, el Señor está contigo…

This translation, which may seem like a technical detail, is actually a theological decision of enormous depth. By calling Mary egch —hermana mayor— la Iglesia de Mongolia no la rebaja, sino que la integra en la estructura de parentesco que organiza toda la vida social mongola. En una cultura donde la familia extensa es el eje de la existencia, llamar a María «hermana mayor» no es una metáfora poética sino una afirmación de relación real: María es de la familia.

The image of Mary in the nomadic

Mongolia today has just over a million people living as nomads or semi-nomads, following its flocks of horses, sheep, goats, bactrians and yaks through steppes and deserts. This way of life, which has been the backbone of Mongolian culture for centuries, poses unique challenges for parish life: how do you build community when your fellivity moves?

The response of the missionaries has been in part the same as that of the first evangelizers of any nomadic people: to carry faith in portable objects. The Rosary, naturally. But also the image.

In some nomadic families that have embraced Catholicism - a small but real number - there is an image of the Virgin Mary within the gives. La gives has a sacred structure in the Mongolian tradition: the entrance always looks south, the home is in the center, the place of the owner of the house in the back, in front of the door. The traditional domestic altar - where the offerings to the spirits and images of the Buddha are placed in Buddhist families - is usually at the bottom, in the most honorable place.

In the nomadic Catholic families, the image of Mary occupies the same place. Not in place of previous traditions, but in conversation with them. The wisest missionaries - following the example of figures such as Matteo Ricci in China or Roberto de Nobili in India - have learned not to ask new believers to leave their whole culture at once, but to discern what can be purified and raised and what should be replaced.

Pope Francis in Mongolia: September 2023

On August 31, 2023, Pope Francis landed at Chinggis Khaan Airport in Ulaanbaatar. It was a pope's first visit to Mongolia throughout history. At the age of eighty-six - with knee problems that forced him to move in a wheelchair - Francis chose to make that long and demanding journey to a country of just 1,300 Catholics, the smallest of all that had visited a pope.

The election wasn't casual. Francis wanted to send a message that went beyond Mongolia: that the small Church matters, that the 1,300 count as much as the 1.3 billion in Brazil, that size does not determine dignity.

At the Mass held at the Steppe Arena in Ulaanbaatar - the country's largest sports pavilion - not only the 1,300 Mongolian Catholics but also Buddhist, Chamanic, Protestant and other religious delegations were present. It was, in miniature, the interreligious dialogue that Francis has made one of the keys to his pontificate.

In his speech to the missionaries, Francis made explicit reference to the Virgin Mary as a model for the Mongolian Church:

«Como María en Caná, sed testigos silenciosos pero activos: no hacéis milagros, pero señaláis al que puede hacerlos. No tenéis respuesta para todo, pero señaláis al único que sí la tiene.»

El shamanismo y la «Madre Eterna»: un diálogo espiritual

Mongol shamanism - Tengrism, in its academic denomination - is one of the oldest spiritual traditions on the planet, with roots in the Paleolithic. In its vision of the world, the universe is animated by spirits that populate nature: trees, rivers, mountains, animals. The shaman - the böö (man) or udgan (woman) - is the mediator between the human world and the spiritual world.

In this tradition there is a female figure of great importance: the Etugen, la «Madre Tierra» o «Madre Eterna», una deidad femenina que personifica la fertilidad, la protección y la vida. No es idéntica a la Virgen María —sería un error teológico grave equipararlas sin matices—, pero comparte con ella rasgos que han facilitado, según los misioneros más atentos, una cierta resonancia en el corazón de los mongoles que se acercan al catolicismo.

El padre Padilla relató en varias entrevistas que varios de los primeros bautizados en Mongolia le dijeron, con palabras diferentes, algo similar: que cuando vieron la imagen de la Virgen María con el Niño, sintieron que «ya la conocían». No en el sentido de una memoria personal, sino en el sentido de una intuición más profunda: que su corazón ya tenía, formado de otro modo, el espacio donde esa imagen podría alojarse.

The First Mongolian Priests

One of the most exciting moments of the young Church of Mongolia was the ordination of the first priests of Mongolian origin. During the first years, all priests were foreign missionaries: Italian, Filipino, Korean, Spanish. The objective of any mission - for the local Church to grow to be able to sustain itself - required the formation of indigenous priests.

The first Mongolian youth were sent to seminars in Italy, Korea and the Philippines. Learning philosophy and theology in a foreign language, adapting to radically different cultures, and then returning to Mongolia with all that baggage to serve a tiny community: it was an extraordinary task that very few young people in any country would have accepted.

Those who did so became pillars of the Mongolian Church. Several of them have described the figure of the Virgin Mary as a constant on her vocational path: in the solitude of the foreign seminary, the Rosary was the thread that kept them connected to both her faith and her home.

• 1990Mongolia legalizes religious freedom. There is not a single baptized Catholic in the country.
• 1992First missionaries of the Consolata. First Mass in Ulaanbaatar (June).
• 1996It is the Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar. Father Padilla, Prefect.
• 2002The Catholic community is over 200 baptized.
• 2003John Paul II raises the Prefecture to the Diocese. Padilla, first bishop.
• 2023Francisco visits Mongolia (31 October - 4 September). First papal visit. The community is over 1,300 faithful.

The small community that takes care of a Church of 2 million km ²

In the fall of 2023, after the visit of Pope Francis, the Catholic community of Mongolia faced a question that is also an opportunity: what to do with the attention and momentum that the papal visit had generated?

The response that emerged from the communities was, to a large extent, the same that had shaped the whole history of the Church in Mongolia: to grow slowly, with roots, with patience. Not to build a larger building but to strengthen the prayer networks. Not looking for number but depth.

The weekly Rosary that is prayed in the parish of the saints Peter and Paul of Ulaanbaatar brings together families of very different origins: Mongols of nomadic origin, Korean expatriates and Filipinos working in the city, some Europeans. They pray together, in Mongol, the same prayer that the first missionaries translated so delicately.

Bayarlag egch Mari…

On the outside, the steppe. The wind. The cold that can kill a man in a few hours if he can't find a shelter. And within, one hundred and thirty people - perhaps more, perhaps less - who carry in their hearts the oldest mystery in the world: that a Mother never abandons her children.

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