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Initially from northern Italy’s Piedmont area, Bishop Giorgio Marengo has spent the previous 19 years serving as a Consolata missionary priest.
An Italian who has served as a missionary in Mongolia for practically 20 years will quickly change into the world’s youngest cardinal.
At 47 years previous, Bishop Giorgio Marengo is similar age that Karol Wojtyła was when Pope Paul VI introduced that he had been chosen to affix the Faculty of Cardinals.
Cardinal-designate Marengo will obtain a pink hat together with 20 different new cardinals at a consistory on Aug. 27, simply two years after his episcopal consecration.
“It is a large shock for me,” Bishop Marengo advised Vatican Information the day after the Pope’s announcement.
“For me, dwelling this new vocation will imply persevering with on the trail of littleness, humility and dialogue,” he mentioned.
Initially from northern Italy’s Piedmont area, Bishop Marengo has spent the previous 19 years serving as a Consolata missionary priest in Mongolia.
Pope Francis named him the prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s apostolic prefecture, in 2020. After a gathering with the Pontiff, Bishop Marengo mentioned that Pope Francis was “very within the … Church in Mongolia and of the Mongolian individuals usually.”
“We all know how a lot the Pope cares about your entire Church, even these areas the place there should not giant numbers; certainly, exactly the place the Church is extra within the minority,” he mentioned.
Mongolia has a inhabitants of about 1,300 Catholics in a rustic of greater than 3 million individuals. The Prefecture Apostolic of Ulaanbaatar serves your entire nation.
Whereas serving as a Consolata missionary in Mongolia, Bishop Marengo established a brand new catechesis program. He advised CNA in 2014 that this system sought to kind younger adults into future catechists by offering classes in theology and the Church and its mission.
“I consider being a bishop in Mongolia is similar to the episcopal ministry of the early Church,” Bishop Marengo mentioned.
“The Church is a really small actuality, it’s a minority, however there’s this group of Mongolian trustworthy who’ve chosen, with nice braveness and in addition a way of accountability, to observe the Lord and change into a part of the Catholic Church.”
The primary fashionable mission to Mongolia was in 1922 and was entrusted to the Congregation of the Immaculate Coronary heart of Mary. However below a communist authorities, non secular expression was quickly thereafter suppressed, till 1992.
In 2002, the Ulaanbaatar mission was elevated to the current apostolic prefecture. The mission‘s superior, the late Father Wenceslao Padilla, a priest of the Immaculate Coronary heart congregation, was appointed prefect and was consecrated a bishop the next yr. Bishop Padilla died in September 2018. Mongolia’s first native priest was ordained in 2016.
Bishop Marengo advised Vatican Information in 2020 that as a result of Mongolia’s Catholic group is so small, it’s particularly essential to concentrate to interreligious dialogue and the cultural traditions of the Mongolian individuals.
“It means dedicating time to know and examine the language, to refine these instruments that permit us to enter into a real dialogue with individuals, to know their factors of reference, their historical past, their cultural and spiritual roots,” he mentioned.
“And on the similar time, in all this, to be trustworthy to the Gospel itself … to supply with nice humility, with nice sincerity this treasured pearl we’ve got obtained which is the Gospel of the Lord.”
Bishop Marengo grew up in Turin, Italy, studied theology on the Pontifical Gregorian College in Rome, and later obtained a license and doctorate from the Pontifical Urbaniana College.
He selected Respicite advert eum et illuminamini as his episcopal motto, which suggests “Look to him and you may be radiant.”
Till the consistory in August, the present youngest cardinal is 55-year-old Cardinal Dieudonné Nzapalainga of Bangui.
Bishop Marengo will flip 48 on June 7.
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