Vatican City: Early in September, Pope Francis will travel to Mongolia for the first time as a pontiff, the Vatican announced on Saturday. Mongolia is a Buddhist-majority country in Asia.

The 86-year-old pope will travel to the sizable country, which is located between China and Russia, from August 31 to September 4 at the invitation of the government and church leaders, according to Matteo Bruni, the director of the Vatican press office.

Francis' announcement of the trip comes just two months after he spent three nights in the hospital with bronchitis before returning to his hectic schedule.

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Among its more than three million citizens, Mongolia has one of the smallest Catholic populations in the world, numbering only 1,500, according to estimates.

But Francis has long advocated for travel to less developed or remote countries.

Italian missionary Giorgio Marengo, the most senior Catholic official in Mongolia as the apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, was made a cardinal by him last August.

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Given its strong economic ties with Mongolia, China will probably dominate the visit.

The Holy See reached a two-year agreement on the contentious topic of bishop appointment in 2018 as a result of Francis' years-long efforts to forge ties with Communist Beijing.

In October, the agreement was extended for another two years despite tensions over the country's roughly 10 million Catholics.

According to Antoine Maire, a Mongolia expert at the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique in France, Mongolia is a peripheral state for China.

However, he asserted that the nation was balanced between its two enormous neighbours and said he did not envision it acting as a middleman between the Vatican and Beijing.
According to Maire, who spoke to AFP, "They are caught in a vice between Russia and China," and that the pope's visit to Mongolia will help them "diversify their external relations."

Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1992 and adopting its first democratic constitution, Mongolia has struggled with political instability.

As part of a plan to counter China's rise, the United States has shown an increasing amount of interest in it in recent years.

In 1992, the Vatican and Mongolia formally established diplomatic ties. Francis has made 41 overseas trips and visited roughly 60 different nations since he was elected pope in 2013.

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He travels despite having a growing number of health issues, most notably a knee issue that has kept him in a wheelchair for the past year.

He travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Hungary, and has trips planned to Portugal and Marseille for later this year.

In addition to trips to Kazakhstan, Japan, and South Korea in the past, he has mentioned the possibility of visiting India in 2024.