Inside Outer Mongolia
By Fr. Wens Padilla, CICM
In a unique event in modern history the Vatican was asked by newly-freed Mongolia to send missionaries. It is a credit to the CICM’s that they were chosen to go and a credit to all Filipino missionaries. Fr. Wens Padilla was chosen to head the team of three. Wens has been in Taiwan and featured in Misyon before.
A Dream Becomes a Reality
MONGOLIA was not a “dream mission” for me when I entered the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM) knowing that what was related to Mainland China and the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia, where our first CICM missionaries did mission work, has long been wiped. It was wiped out as a CICM mission field and priority after our last European confreres came into my dream- screen, catching me unawares, on April 1992 when I got my nomination that I was chosen as one of the members of the first CICM team to come to Mongolia. I was then in the Philippines still grieving at the death of my father at whose funerals I officiated on January 10, 1992, our team of three missionaries landed at the Ulaan Baatar International Airport.