Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Ulaan Baator (Fides Service) – “It will be a Christmas of joy and hope in Mongolia, where the Church was established only eleven years ago” said Bishop Wenceslaw Padilla, Prefect Apostolic of Ulaan Baatar, told Fides Service with regard to preparations and pre-Christmas spirit in Mongolia. “Our Apostolic Prefecture has three parishes and they are preparing with fervour for the Christmas season . In Mongolia December 25 is not a holiday but we will are creating a spiritual atmosphere of joy and expectancy which will culminate with Midnight Mass on the 24 December which people can attend because it is after working hours”.
Among local Christmas initiatives illustrated by Bishop Padilla, special parties for school children and parents, groups of catechists and animators in parishes, schools and youth groups; gifts for inmates of prisons, people on the streets. The 45 missionaries working in the Prefecture are promoting special collections and other initiatives of solidarity for the poor.
Over Christmas the Verbist Caring Center will organise special events for its 120 inmates children rescued from the city sewers by Father Gilbert Sales. On 30 December, the parish in St Peter and Paul Cathedral, consecrated on 30 August this year by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, will hold a special day for children with folklore dancing and singing and presents for all. “I have told them that Christmas is the birthday of the Lord Jesus Christ: it is important to explain because many have never heard of Christmas before” Father Gilbert told Fides.
For 8 years Father Sales, a Scheut missionary from the Philippines, has worked to help street children. Swarms of street children sell themselves or steal to survive, many die of TB, scabies, kidney disease or sexually transmitted illnesses. They live in the sewers which are warmer than the streets because Winter temperatures are often stable at minus 30 C.
Verbist Caring Center has a staff of about 30. “We give the children all round care: a bed, meals, clean clothes and even more important we send them to school. Qualified education is the key to the future” Father Sales told Fides. The Centre is officially recognised as a non confessional NGO.
Mongolia has about 4000 children on its streets, 2.000 of them in the capital Ulaan Baator. “In 80% of the cases, poverty is the root of the problem. Numerous families are homeless and the cold drives them underground. The remaining 20% ran away from broken homes or other problems such as alcohol abuse etc”.
(PA) (Fides Service 18/12/2003 lines 45 words 496)
