Perhaps the most famous of the merchant visitors to Mongolia, Marco Polo, wrote in his 13th-century “Travels” about how Kublai Khan, a Mongolian emperor and grandson of Genghis Khan, put down a revolt by “a baptized Christian.” After having the rebel rolled up in a carpet that “was dragged all over the place with such violence that he died,” the emperor made a peace offering to the Christians.
He told them, Marco Polo wrote, that the “the cross of your God did the right thing by not helping” the rebel and later suggested that the pope send 100 wise Christians to his land with the potential of his own conversion, “so there will be more Christians here than there are in your part of the world.”It did not shake out that way.
Buddhism took hold, and Catholicism struggled.
Centuries later, in the 1920s, the Vatican sought to establish mission structures in the country, but Mongolia fell under the Soviet sphere and Communism prevailed for the next 70 years.
As religion was suppressed, atheism grew.
Persons:
Marco Polo, Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan, “, ”
Locations:
Mongolia, Mongolian