The Mongol invasions nearly conquered Europe and while they postdate Genghis Khan and were carried out by his descendants, it still seems like an odd choice to praise Genghis.
Under the towering statue of 13th-century warrior Genghis Khan, Pope Francis was not greeted by hordes of people in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar on Saturday.
Rather than the throngs of thousands he’s used to, about 200 of the faithful from one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities enthusiastically greeted the pontiff in the city’s central Sükhbaatar Square, where he sat with Mongolia’s President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh.
Francis delivered his remarks to the president, diplomats and cultural leaders at the state palace, where he praised Mongolia’s tradition of religious freedom, noting that such tolerance existed both before and during the expansion of the Mongol Empire over vast swaths of the world.
“The fact that the empire could embrace such distant and varied lands over the centuries bears witness to the remarkable ability of your ancestors to acknowledge the outstanding qualities of the peoples present in its immense territory and to put those qualities at the service of a common development,” Francis said, according to The Associated Press. “This model should be valued and re-proposed in our own day,” he said.
Lamenting an “earth devastated by countless conflicts” and calling for a renewal of respect for international law, the pontiff also referred to “Pax Mongolica,” Latin for Mongol peace, a period of relative stability over Eurasia during the 13th and 14th centuries among those living in the Mongol Empire’s conquered territories.
The Mongol treatment of religious minorities is somewhat complicated. There was a certain amount of religious freedom and tolerance, on the other hand there were also brutal and ruthless invasions. The Catholic Church benefited in some ways from increased access to Asia, but centers of Christian life were also devastated.
They needed good grazing land for their horses. That was one thing that stopped them, or so I’ve read 🙂
The Mongols allowed a certain religious and cultural freedom in their conquered subjects but they brooked no offense to their traditions. For instance, if somebody stepped on a doorstep, it was an immediate death sentence. They didn’t like that for some reason. They had other weird customs derived from their nomadic horsey life, too.
They were good conquerors but shitty administrators. They weren’t able to hold on to what they took. Riding ponies and shooting people with arrows on the taiga worked in battle but that shit doesn’t translate into governance.
Thanks Jeff, good point.
And why should they bother invading tiny, hilly Western Europe, when they have the vast grasslands of Asia to feed their horses?
According to my Catholic friends, they speak much more about the “Pox Moronica”, with Francis’s name and “antichrist” often coming up in the same sentence. While not catholic, I can’t think of a pope who’s uttered stranger things or has been more of a revisionist in my lifetime than Frank.
Now we know the Pope a is a total phony the Vatican blew it big time with this fraud as authentic as a four dollar Bill and Satan’s Pope not Christs
It would be a daunting challenge indeed to find a more horrific mass-murderer, thief, and general all-around low-life grifter than Genghis Khan and his moron Mongol empire.
All of the innumerable Christian men, women, and children who suffered and died horribly (typically in very gruesome fashion) at the hands of Khan and his descendants would be deeply disturbed to hear a Pope make such historically dishonest and immoral statements.
Well, that’s Francis the talking mule for you. The man is to the papacy what Bidet is to the Presidency. I imagine it is a slobbering love-fest every time the two of them get together. At least briefly. Until Francis is again forcibly reminded what a hollow, unintelligible fool Bidet is. Then he at least privately reigns things in a bit, I’d imagine (though I may be giving him too much credit).
Pope is a leftist Marxist as a Catholic he’s doing everything he can to destroy the true growth in the church that is the traditional Latin mass were young people are flocking to church for the traditional mass in the more liberal Novus order is losing Catholics. So what that side does he take? Yes against the traditional mass. It’s been around for 1500 years.