The motto and logo for Pope Francis’ visit to Kazakhstan in September were made public by the Vatican on Tuesday.
“Messengers of Peace and Unity,” the visit’s slogan, is inscribed in Kazakh across the top of the emblem and Russian across the bottom.
The official languages of the Central Asian nation are Kazakh and Russian. For the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religion, Pope Francis will visit Nur-Sultan.
Two hands are shown in the sky blue and yellow emblem as a bird holding an olive branch.
According to a Vatican news release, a heart on the dove’s wing “represents love, the fruit of mutual understanding, collaboration, and discourse.”
An old form of folk art known as a Kazakh ornament has been used to depict the olive branch.
An picture of a “shanyrak,” which is a component of the Emblem of the Republic of Kazakhstan, is formed by blue lines behind the dove. The top dome-like component of a yurt, the customary circular tent used by nomadic cultures in Central Asia, is represented by the term “shanyrak.” The blue and yellow lines come together to create a cross.
The logo’s colours, blue and yellow, match those of the flag of Kazakhstan.
The majority of ethnic Kazakhs are Sunni Muslims, which is the most widely practised religion in the nation. Russian Orthodox Christianity, with more than 20% of the population, is the second most practised religion, according to a 2009 national census. Statistics from 2008 indicate that there are around 250,000 Latin Rite Catholics in the nation, along with a sizable immigrant population.
In Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where some estimates put the number of Ukrainian Greek Catholics at 10,000, Pope Francis built an apostolic administration for Byzantine Catholics in 2019.
Despite being the biggest 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 of the nation.