Mongolia: Mourning the first Bishop of Mongolia

Source: Fides News

Bishop Wenceslao Padilla, of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the first Bishop of Mongolia, died on 25 September at the age of 68, following a heart attack. He had accompanied the young Mongolian church for the past 26 years.

Bishop Padilla, of Filipino nationality, was sent to Mongolia in 1992, following the reopening of the nation after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and he remained there. Today the local Church - a community of 1,300 faithful - is in mourning and remembers him as a person of great faith, who dedicated his whole life to the poor and to the education of children and young people.

In a message sent to Fides, Pablo Virgilio David, vice-president of the Episcopal Conference of the Philippines and Bishop of Kalookan, expressed the condolences of the Filipino Church to the Church of Mongolia, "the youngest Catholic Church in the world", praising "the Bishop's contribution to evangelisation in Mongolia". He said Bishop Padilla "gave himself wholeheartedly to a foreign people, in a distant land; God used him to touch the hearts of so many people in Mongolia".

When Bishop Padilla arrived in Mongolia with two of his CICM confreres, there was no church or Catholic in Mongolia. However, he discovered some Catholic foreigners among the personnel who worked in foreign embassies. Thus prayer meetings began in the house, where Sunday Mass was celebrated. As the number of participants grew, community halls were rented to celebrate Sunday mass. Only years later were churches built.

Thanks to the pastoral work of Bishop Padilla and the first priests, the "little flock" of the church in Mongolia was reborn, a community that has always been committed to its mission through dialogue with cultures, religions and poor people. From the beginning, the Catholic community held a sensitive and respectful attitude towards local cultures, establishing good relations with other religions, while dealing with the service and social assistance of many disadvantaged, poor and marginalised people in society. The territory entrusted to Bishop Padilla included all of Mongolia - two and a half million people, in the Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar. At the time of his episcopal ordination, in 2003, Bishop Padilla said: "The priority is to be on good terms with everyone, without discrimination, bearing a testimony of Christ's love to Buddhists, other Christians, Muslims and the whole people of Mongolia". Right from the beginning, Padilla conquered the heart of the Mongolian people and was greatly appreciated among Russian Orthodox Christians, Buddhists, shamans and members of non-Christian religious groups.

As a Bishop, he immediately committed himself to raising the educational level of the community of the faithful, from kindergarten to university. "We have sponsored students to go abroad and graduate in a foreign university, but I want our young people to have a good education here in their country", he said.

After 26 years of Bishop Padilla's ministry, missionaries came to Mongolia from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. They found technical schools, orphanages, homes for the elderly, clinics, shelters for domestic violence and nurseries. These centres are often set up in suburbs where basic services are missing. The beneficiaries are poor people and children from very poor families. Through them, the Catholic mission was also able to enter into relations with the children's siblings and parents, thus expanding the service of assistance, healing and education.

The Catholic Church of Mongolia celebrated its 25th birthday in 2017. At that time, one of the priests there said, "the faith of these people is as courageous as the bands of grass that shyly emerge from the rocky ground of the Gobi Desert".