AKIPRESS.COM - Cardinal Giorgio Marengo of Mongolia, the youngest Prince of the Church in Catholicism, who will welcome Pope Francis to his adopted country in just over a month’s time, has stressed the importance of the papal visit for the country’s small Catholic population, Crux reported.

“He wants to visit one of the tiniest Catholic communities in the world,” showing once more that “his heart burns with love for the universal Church, and especially the Church where it lives in a minority context,” Marengo told journalists on the margins of an event organized by the Lay Centre in Rome on Monday.

Noting that the pope will visit just one year after giving him a red hat, Marengo said there are many reasons why Mongolia is important for Pope Francis, but he said the biggest reason is “probably because the small Catholic flock in Mongolia lives out its faith with joy, with simplicity, being a missionary disciple.”

“Two, three years ago, during the extraordinary missionary month, Pope Francis insisted on living out our identity as missionary disciples, and this dimension of our faith is lived in simplicity in Mongolia, and I think this is an aspect that will for sure emerge from this journey,” Marengo said.

Marengo was in Rome to give a keynote speech at a July 17 event organized jointly by the Lay Centre and the Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology in New Jersey, titled, “Grace and Action: The Ministry of Catechists in the Footsteps of St. Paul.”

In his speech, Marengo focused on the task of missionaries to “whisper the Gospel” to the people they serve.

He said the phrase was initially coined by Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil, the former Archbishop of Guwahati in India, who was inspired with the concept during a coffee break at the 1998 synod special assembly for Asia.

This image is especially potent in Mongolia culture, where mantras and various spiritual iterations are often expressed in a whisper, he said.

Whispering, Marengo said, “presupposes friendship, closeness. One doesn’t whisper to the first person on the street, but to a friend or someone you love,” and it can also imply “discretion and calm.”