Pope Francis will visit Kazakhstan in September for an interreligious gathering, according to current plans.
In a statement released on Monday, Matteo Bruni, the director of the Holy See Press Office, confirmed the trip.
The statement read, “Accepting the invitation of civil and ecclesial authorities, Pope Francis will make the announced Apostolic Journey to Kazakhstan from September 13–15 this year, visiting Nur-Sultan on the occasion of the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions.
A papal visit may happen, according to a statement made in April by Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
Pope Francis confirmed his intention to visit the Central Asian nation during a meeting with the media on his flight home from Canada on Saturday, stating, “That wouldn’t be too rigorous a journey.”
Recently, it has been suggested that Kazakhstan could serve as a venue for a meeting between Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who was also anticipated to attend the congress.
St. Pope John Paul II visited Kazakhstan and Armenia in September 2001, making it the first pope to visit either nation.
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, John Paul II travelled to Kazakhstan for four days at the age of 81 while afflicted with Parkinson’s disease.
According to data from 2008, Kazakhstan has five Catholic dioceses and about 250,000 Latin Rite Catholics, who together make up a tiny minority of the country’s 18 million inhabitants.
The majority of ethnic Kazakhs are Sunni Muslims, which is the most widely practised religion in the nation.
Russian Orthodox Christianity is the second most popular religion, with more than 20% of the population, according to a 2009 national census.
There are a lot of immigrants living in the Central Asian nation.
In Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where some estimates put the number of Ukrainian Greek Catholics at 10,000, Pope Francis erected an apostolic administration for Byzantine Catholics in 2019.
Despite being the largest landlocked nation in the world, Kazakhstan has one of the lowest population densities. Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and a portion of the Caspian Sea are all neighbours to the nation.