Pope’s visit to Mongolia – Buddhists Beware

by Senaka Weeraratna, The Buddhist Channel, 4 September 2023

Whenever the Europeans entered a non-European country it spelled doom for the indigenous people. This is the history of the world beginning with Christopher Columbus.

On June 7, 1494, Pope Alexander VI published a Bull ‘ inter caetera’ to divide the New World between Spain and Portugal.

The current visit of Pope Francis to Mongolia, a Buddhist Country, is not good news. The Vatican sees Buddhists in Mongolia as targets for conversion to Christianity.

That is the main purpose of the Pope’s visit to Mongolia. The Vatican succeeded in South Korea. A predominantly Buddhist country in 1945 South Korea today has lost its Buddhist predominance.

No Pope will visit a Muslim country to convert the Muslims to Christianity. He knows the danger if he does so. The Buddhists still lack a mechanism to warn fellow Buddhists of an impending danger.

The Buddhists are still playing the Fellowship game while their territory all over the world is getting reduced incrementally.  During the last one thousand years no religion has lost territory and space more than Buddhism.

The equivalent of Pope Urban 2 is not there in Buddhism – to urge or advise the Buddhist leaders of Mongolia to be careful and not to be naive when dealing with Popes.

Buddhists are now an embattled group. Their rivals are at their doorstep. The idea of self-defense or perceiving a threat and taking steps to avert it is not in the dictionary of the Buddhists, unfortunately.  

What lessons have the Buddhists learned from disasters like what happened at the University of Nalanda in the year 1193?  Almost none.