From zero to hero: Mongolia finds God

17 Oct 2013

By Matthew Biddle

Bishop Wenceslao Padilla of Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital, confirms a boy named George at Easter in 2008 in a tent that serves as Good Shepherd Church. Father Ronald Magbanua, the pastor, assists while George’s sponsor looks on. Mongolians use only a first name. PHOTO: CNS

When Bishop Wenceslao Padilla arrived in Mongolia with two other missionary priests in 1992, there were no Catholics in the entire country.

His mission was much like that of the early apostles, to bring Catholicism to a land that was yet to encounter it.

Twenty-one years later there are more than 900 Catholics in Mongolia, 71 religious priests and sisters from 12 congregations, four Catholic parishes and a unique Cathedral.

The progress the Church has made in the former communist nation is astounding.

Bishop Padilla visited Perth last month to launch the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference statement for Social Justice Sunday.

He told The Record that while he was pleased with the gradual spread of Catholicism in Mongolia, the Church there is still very much in its infancy.

“When I see the people who have joined the Catholic faith, I am really very happy,” he says.

“But there is a pinch of sadness too because, of the 900 converted Mongolian brothers and sisters, around 19 or 20 per cent are already leaving the Church. The nomadic mentality is still very active in the Mongolian life.”

Reversing that trend is the biggest challenge for Bishop Padilla, but he says there are several other important issues that also require attention.

One of these is the recently adjusted quota system, which will affect the number of foreign missionaries the Church can have in Mongolia.

Previously, for every 40 foreign missionaries working for the Church, 60 locals were required to be employed. But the quota has recently increased.

“Now, for every 25 foreign missionaries you have to employ 75 Mongolian locals, but we cannot have any more local workers, we don’t have the money to pay salaries,” Bishop Padilla explained.

The unexpected change caught the Mongolian Church off-guard.

“We have overshot the quota system,” Bishop Padilla says. “We are around 16 missionaries over the quota, so either we have to send the 16 away or to increase our workers by another 66, added to the 200 Mongolians we already have.”

While negotiations with the government have given the Church more time to amend the imbalance, Bishop Padilla says Catholicism in Mongolia is under constant threat.

“The government is trying to tell us that we are not to teach religion in our schools, if we teach religion it should be in the church premises,” he says.

The first Catholic elementary school was opened in September last year, and has 85 children in its kindergarten class and another 60 on the waiting list.

Bishop Padilla says even if religion is withheld from the school’s curriculum, he is still hopeful for its future.

“Good manners, right conduct, ethics and human values – these are the things that maybe we can inculcate in the minds of the children when they come to the schools,” he said.

The Philippines-born bishop’s own journey to the priesthood and then to the leadership of the Church in Mongolia is fascinating.

Born into a Catholic family with six siblings, as an infant he was severely unwell and was close to death before what he describes as a “miracle” occurred.

His parents took the young Wenceslao to a place of pilgrimage and offered him to God, praying that if God would heal him, he would be God’s own.

Those prayers were answered, and, at the tender age of 11, Wenceslao entered the seminary to study for the priesthood. He was eventually ordained a priest for the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM) in 1976.

He spent five years as a parish priest in Taiwan, before serving as the regional superior there for a further six years.

Establishing Catholicism in Mongolia was the last thing the then-Fr Padilla expected would be his next assignment.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Mongolia was liberated from Communism and began to have diplomatic relations with democratic international communities, including Vatican City.

As a result of such discussions, Pope John Paul II asked the CICM Order to lead the missionary work in Mongolia.

In 1992 the CICM appealed for priests to volunteer to establish a mission in Mongolia, and Fr Padilla joined two fellow clergymen in offering their services.

He says he was inspired largely by the example of his father, who died shortly before the mission in Mongolia began.

“He had been a religious educator and a catechist for 36 years,” Bishop Padilla says.

“He was doing missionary work in the mountain provinces of the Philippines. I owe him a lot and also my mother, who is still alive, she is 97 years old.”

On arriving in Mongolia, the three missionary priests soon realised they had a lot of work to do.

“We started from zero. We didn’t have any church building, we didn’t have any local Catholics… so it was a very difficult start,” Bishop Padilla says.

“We used our parlours, the living rooms of the apartments that we were renting to be the worship halls on Sundays.”

But such a venue could not accommodate the growing numbers of Mass-goers for long, resulting in constant shifts to larger premises.

“Our Church has been like a nomad,” Bishop Padilla says. “Before we had the formal church, we transferred seven times.”

In 2001 the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul was constructed, with a capacity of 600 people.

“The Cathedral was inspired by the dwelling of the people,” Bishop Padilla explains. “It’s sitting on a one-story building in the form of a cross. The first floor is used for the quarters for the priests… and there are classrooms for the children coming for their studies, and we have a library too.”

There are also four parishes and five sub-stations – places where Mass is said occasionally – throughout the city of Ulaanbaatar.

The Mongolian capital itself has undergone a major transformation in the two decades since his arrival, Bishop Padilla says.

“When I arrived in 1992, Ulaanbaatar was the most ugly city I had ever seen, full of very dull colours because it had just been released from the communist regime,” he says.

“The city of Ulaanbaatar is almost the same as the modern cities you have now… there are a lot of high-rise buildings coming up.”

Bishop Padilla says while foreigners still call Mongolia “the hardship country”, living conditions are improving and the number of homeless children is decreasing.

“With the market economy and the change of government administration… life is getting better, but we still have people who are very poor,” he says.

After spending almost 70 years under the rule of communism, there are still remnants of the old regime in the mentality of the people, particularly government officials, Bishop Padilla says.

“If there is antagonism against the Catholic religion it is because of them,” he says.

“They don’t like religions to operate [in Mongolia], they think we are the opium of the people. But it’s getting less and less, because many of these government officials now are young people who have been educated in Europe or democratic countries.”

The decades of communist rule may even be responsible for the large percentage of Mongolian Catholic converts who have left the faith.

“During the communist regime there was a spiritual vacuum, because they had always been under brainwashing from the communists,” Bishop Padilla says.

“So when communism collapsed, any new thing introduced to Mongolia became very attractive to the Mongolians.

“That’s why I think we are losing some people because they are just shopping to see which is the best religion.”

About 80 per cent of Mongolia’s population of 2.8 million follows Tibetan Buddhism, which claims to be the national religion.

There are also about 200 different Protestant denominations present in Mongolia, all competing for the membership of people who may have never encountered religion.

But Catholicism is making steady progress, and Bishop Padilla says he feels “fulfilled” with the work the Church is doing in Mongolia.

“We have two orphanages or street children centres, one has 50 children and the other has 30, and we give shelter and food to all these children,” he says.

Bishop Padilla says he hopes to be able to continue the work the Church has started in Mongolia and change the nation for the better.

“As I look into the future… I would like to change the mentality of the people from nomadic to a sedentary form, which is civilisation,” he says.

“That means a lot of education has to be inculcated in the minds of the people, starting from the lowest levels of education to the highest levels.”