Pope Francis, 86, admitted on Monday that it was no longer as easy for him to travel at his age, having just returned from an unprecedented visit to Mongolia marked by an attempt at rapprochement with neighboring China, with which the Holy See has no diplomatic relations.
“Dear brothers and sisters of Mongolia, thank you for the gift of friendship I have received in recent days. Bayarlalaa!” (thank you in Mongolian language), he wrote on the social network X (new name of Twitter) shortly after his plane took off at midday.
The papal flight landed shortly after 4:00 p.m. (2:00 p.m. GMT) in Rome.
Questioned by the journalists who traveled with him, François admitted that it was no longer so “easy” for him to travel to the antipodes at his old age and given the health problems that have weakened him for several years.
“To be frank, traveling is no longer as easy for me as it was at the beginning, I am limited in walking”, admitted the sovereign pontiff, hampered by pain in the knee and hip, operated on the abdomen in June and who most often uses a wheelchair.
With this visit to Mongolia, a nation located between China and Russia, Francis had two objectives: to reach a remote region where Catholicism is still not widespread, and to take advantage of his presence at the gates of China to strengthen ties with Beijing.
Before leaving Mongolia on Monday morning, he visited the “House of Mercy”, which shelters homeless people and victims of domestic violence, in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital Ulaanbaatar. Braving potential interrogations on their return, Chinese Catholics had made the trip to Mongolia.
Outside the Catholic home, a group of women were singing in Mandarin, wiping away a few tears as the pope’s black car passed.
“Dear Pope, our best wishes are with you!” they sang.
Still on the plane back, the pope judged relations between the Vatican and Beijing “very respectful”, while considering that the two parties should “go a long way” to understand each other better.
“Relations with China are very respectful, very. I have great admiration for the Chinese people,” said the Argentinian Jesuit. But we must “go further on the religious aspect to better understand each other, so that Chinese citizens do not think that the Church does not accept their culture, their values, that the Church depends on a foreign power” , he added.
The Chinese government is suspicious of any organization, particularly religious, likely to challenge its authority.
The day before, the sovereign pontiff had already appeared to send a message to China, without naming it explicitly: “Governments and secular institutions have nothing to fear from the evangelizing action of the Church because it does not has no political agenda”.
Groups of Chinese pilgrims told AFP that they had told authorities in their country that they were on a tourist trip to be able to go to Mongolia.
It was “quite difficult to come here”, confided, in the crowd who came to attend mass on Sunday, a Chinese woman from the big city of Xi’an (north) who did not give her name.
She said the two organizers of her group’s pilgrimage had been arrested in China.
“Let me tell you that I’m ashamed to raise the (Chinese) national flag,” she said. “But I have to hold it and let the pope know how difficult it is for us.”
Freedom of religion in Mongolia contrasts with the situation in neighboring China where it remains hampered.
This did not prevent the Chinese government and the Vatican from renewing an agreement last year on the thorny issue of the appointment of bishops, criticized by some as a dangerous concession from the Holy See in exchange for its presence in the country.
A former satellite of the Soviet Union, Mongolia has been a democracy since 1992. Mainly Buddhist, it has one of the smallest Catholic communities in the world: 1,400 members including 25 priests for some three million inhabitants.
Mongolia depends on Russia for its energy imports and on China for the export of its raw materials, mainly coal.
But while remaining neutral vis-à-vis its powerful neighbours, it has embarked on a “third neighbour” policy, strengthening its relations with other nations, notably the United States, Japan and South Korea. South, for the sake of balance.
04/09/2023 17:40:49 – On board the papal plane (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
