Missionary Trip to Mongolia—Reported by Dr. Brian Clowes, October 2009.

After 30 hours of travel, I arrived at Genghis Khan International Airport in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  Father Pierre Palussiere and Ligaya Acosta met me there late at night.  It is always refreshing to see familiar faces upon arriving in a far-away place after a long trip.

Father Pierre knows absolutely everything.  In addition to being a priest and lawyer, he is a licensed pilot and is fluent in more languages than I can count without taking my shoes off.  He said that Mongolian is perhaps the most difficult language on Earth to learn, but he did it with a concentrated year of effort.  He is a huge help to Bishop Wenceslao “Wens” Padilla, the Apostolic Prefect of Mongolia.

Human Life International in Nomad’s Land

Mongolia is a vast, empty country that is significantly larger than Alaska but has a population of only 2.7 million people and 45 million farm animals.  Mongolia’s population density outside Ulaanbaatar (which possesses half of the nation’s people) is half that of the empty nation of Western Sahara in Africa, and one percent that of remote Nepal.  Mongolia’s total fertility rate — the average number of children women must have to attain a stable population — is 2.02 (2.10 is required for replacement), and is projected to decline to a disastrous 1.35 in just 15 years.

One would think that the population controllers would leave Mongolia alone, since it is one of the emptiest nations on Earth, with a rapidly-declining total fertility rate to boot.  But no, they are there doing their evil work — the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Medicins sans Frontieres, and, of course, all of the organs of the United Nations, including UNAIDS, UNCEDAW, UNDESA, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF and UNWHO, a regular alphabet soup of death and sterility.

Our mission was to alert the fledgling Catholic Church to anti-life threats in Mongolia and to try to help Bishop Padilla and his handful of priests learn and transmit the pro-life message to all the people in the country.

Ulaanbaatar is often referred to as “U.B.” by the expats who live there, because there are about 174 ways to spell the name of the city, and apparently all of them are wrong.  U.B. rests in a spectacular natural setting, but its architecture was blighted by the Communists for decades after they took control of the nation in 1920, making Mongolia only the second nation to fall to the soul-killing Communist scourge.  Gray, deteriorating bare concrete buildings are the norm, although color is breaking out in various places on new buildings under construction.

Spreading the Faith in Mongolia

The Catholic Church was only established in Mongolia in 1993, the year Father Wens Padilla arrived with two other priests.  Since that time, they have labored tirelessly to build a Catholic infrastructure, which in turn will assist in spreading the Catholic Faith.

The schoolteachers are not allowed to teach the Faith or even have religious images in the classrooms, and the government may become overtly hostile at any time.  So, the Church in Mongolia primarily cares for the people and evangelizes quietly, one-on-one, behind the scenes.

In 1996, the Church baptized its first 17 people.  Since then, many more have followed, and today there are 25 priests and 650 Catholics in the country, a growth rate of more than 20 percent per year.  Bishop Padilla, who was consecrated in 2003, has the first gear of a tank, and he keeps grinding ahead, carefully and methodically placing one stone on top of another to construct a Catholic infrastructure.  There are no native-born Mongolian priests yet, but the first Mongolian seminarian is studying in South Korea.

From what I can see of the strong Faith of the few Catholics here, Mongolia is destined to become a beacon of hope to the world.

Yakking It Up in U.B.

Ligaya and I visited and spoke at every single parish in U.B. — all three of them.  We were introduced to the gastrointestinal delights of lumps of congealed yak milk and sliced ginseng with honey, which I took to like a fish takes to bowling.  We did miss out on the blowtorched marmot (yes, you read that right).  However, the yak cheese is very good indeed.

Brother Andrew Lephuong, SDB, is principal of the Salesian School in Ulaanbaatar.  A former auto mechanic, he used old 40-foot shipping containers to build a school.  He modified sixteen of these steel containers, arranging them in the shape of a small school, then insulated them and spread a stucco-like material on the outside, painting it a cheerful array of colors.  It really was a very pleasant environment for the students, and you would never guess that the school possessed such humble origins.

One of the high points of the journey was speaking to about 330 youths from the Salesian school.  Their ages ranged from 16 to 22, and they very seriously listened to everything we had to say.  This might have had something to do with Brother Andrew walking around the perimeter of the group and whacking kids with a rolled-up sheaf of papers once in a while.  He has quite a collection of earrings he has taken from the boys, and he confiscates any cell phones used for texting during class for a month!

The kids were amazed by Ligaya’s presentation on the development of the preborn child, acting as if they had never seen this information before.  As always, the boys absorbed the information while trying to stay cool-looking, and the girls were rapt with attention.  It was amusing to watch the boys quietly clowning around with each other while furtively keeping their eyes on the screen.

After our visit to the Salesian school, Ligaya said that she was looking forward to sampling some Mongolian barbecue.  Brother Andrew smiled and told her that the only place you can get Mongolian barbecue in Ulaanbaatar is at the Mongolian Grill, which is run by an American who had to teach the Mongolian cooks how to prepare it!

As far as food is concerned, the Mongolians have a saying — “Share your breakfast with no one, your lunch with your friends, and your dinner with your enemies.”  In other words, a huge breakfast, normal lunch, and no dinner at all.  We followed this rule each day with a great big spread in the early morning at the Bishop’s house, followed by a normal-sized lunch and perhaps a small snack of yak cheese, bread and tea upon returning after 10 p.m., especially on those days where we were kept as busy as a one-legged man in an Irish dancing competition.  During these late evening snacks, Bishop Padilla, Ligaya and I had in-depth conversations on the future of the Church and the pro-life movement in Mongolia, and the Bishop assured us that he will invite HLI to return to his country in the near future.

The Mongolian children are very beautiful, and they look exactly the same as they did in 1920s-era National Geographic magazines.  They all have the standard-issue rosy plump cheeks, they are very shy, and they are invariably bundled up in ski suits that make them almost as wide as they are tall.  No wonder their parents carry them everywhere.  They can barely move under all of those layers!  A few of the kids have names that translate into “Vicious Dog,” “Not Here,” “Not a Human Being,” and “Not This One.”  The idea is to confuse evil or jealous spirits that ask for their names.

It is certainly cold in Ulaanbaatar in October, occasionally getting down to freezing temperatures, but the local people assured us that the average low temperature in the “cold” season is thirty below zero, with occasional dips to minus fifty!   

Because of Bishop Padilla’s wonderful hospitality and paternal concern for our welfare, it was especially difficult for us to leave Mongolia.  He had accompanied Ligaya and me every step of the way during our visit to Mongolia and had supported our mission in every possible way.  He is certainly one of the most pro-life bishops I have ever met.

              As I walked into the secure area of the airport, I thought about the great potential for the Faith in this country, since Bishop Padilla is constructing it from the ground up.  We fervently hope that Human Life International can help him program a pro-life ethic into the very DNA of the Mongolian Catholic Church.