Pope’s visit to Mongolia – Buddhists Beware
Posted on September 3rd, 2023
Senaka Weeraratna
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.
Tordesillas – How the Pope divided the world between Spain and Portugal
The story of the treaty of Tordesillas and how the Popes Alexander VI and Julius II divided the non-Christian 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.
When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
― Jomo Kenyatta
African Freedom Fighter and Leader of Kenya
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.
Senaka Weeraratna