Catholics travel from across Asia for papal Mass in Mongolia

Catholics from across Asia travelled to Mongolia to attend the country’s first-ever papal Mass with Pope Francis on Sunday.

“For people in Asia…we do not have a lot of opportunities to meet the Pope personally, so for many of us, for most of us, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it is like a dream come true for many many Asians,” Hee Jung Choi from Seoul told CNA at the Mass on 3 September.

While papal Masses on the Pope’s other international trips can draw hundreds of thousands of people, the Mass in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar only had an estimated 2,000 in attendance – presenting a rare opportunity for attendees to meet the Pope personally.

“We came to Mongolia to ask the Pope to visit Vietnam,” Father Huynh The Vinh of the Vietnamese diocese of Phu Cuong said.

Huynh is one of 90 Vietnamese Catholics who made the journey to Mongolia to see the…