Pope Francis to Visit Kazakhstan in September

The first pope to travel to Kazakhstan was St. Pope John Paul II, who visited the country, together with Armenia, in September 2001. At 81 years old, and suffering from Parkinson's disease, John Paul II spent four days in Kazakhstan amid heightened security concerns following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In Kazakhstan, there are five Catholic dioceses and approximately 250,000 Latin Rite Catholics, according to 2008 statistics, making up a small minority of its population of 18 million people.

Ethnic Kazakhs are predominately Sunni Muslims, the most commonly practiced religion in the country. According to a 2009 national census, the second most practiced religion is Russian Orthodox Christianity, at more than 20%. The Central Asian country is also home to many immigrants.

Pope Francis erected an apostolic administration for Byzantine Catholics in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, in 2019, highlighting the growing number of Ukrainian Greek Catholics in the country, which some estimates put at around 10,000.

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Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country, but it has one of the lowest population densities. The country shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan and adjoins part of the Caspian Sea.