Nur-Sultan, Sept. 13 (BNA): Pope Francis will visit the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan this week, where he will serve a small Catholic community and participate in an interfaith conference aimed at promoting peace and dialogue.
On Tuesday, Francis was traveling to the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan to meet with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev during the state visit portion of his three-day trip.
On Wednesday and Thursday, he is participating in an interfaith meeting with more than 100 delegations from Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Shinto and other religious groups from 50 countries.
Francis will be in the Kazakh capital coinciding with the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is making his first foreign visit since the coronavirus pandemic.
But the Vatican says there are no plans for Francis to meet with Xi, who will not attend the conference, according to the Associated Press.
The Holy See and Beijing have had no diplomatic relations for more than half a century, and the two sides are finalizing the renewal of a controversial agreement over nominations for China’s Catholic bishop.
Kazakhstan borders Russia to the north and China to the east and has about 130 ethnic groups. The conference is a masterpiece of its foreign policy and a reflection of its multicultural and multi-ethnic population, which has long been described as a crossroads between East and West.
Darhan Kedirali, Minister of Information and Social Development, said that the presence of global religious leaders in the country fully serves the national interests of Kazakhstan.
“I think the conference will give an example that other issues can also be resolved through interfaith dialogue.”
When Saint John Paul II visited in 2001, 10 years after independence, he highlighted Kazakhstan’s diversity while remembering its dark past under Stalinist oppression.
Many descendants of the deportees remain and some make up the country’s Catholic community, which numbers only 125,000 people in a country of about 19 million people.
Sophia Gatovskaya, a parishioner at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the capital, said that she attended the first papal visit and that it has paid off to this day.
“It was really amazing. After this visit, we have peace and tolerance in our republic. We have many nationalities in Kazakhstan, and we all live together. We expect the same from this visit (of Pope Francis) that we will have peace in our republic.”