Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia yesterday in the first visit of a Pope to the landlocked Asian country.
Pope Francis said to reporters in anticipation of his visit: ‘There are only a few inhabitants – a small people, but a big culture… I think it will do us good to try to understand this long, big silence, understand what it means – not intellectually, but with senses.’
The Pope met with the President and Prime Minister of Mongolia, before visiting clergy from Mongolia’s 1 000-strong Catholic community.
The Catholic Church was only legalised in the country in 1992 as Mongolia liberalised after decades of totalitarian communist rule.
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