About 10,000 people will attend the Holy Mass that will be held by Pope Francis in the Kazakh capital as part of the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. In addition to the 3,000 pilgrims of the Catholic Church, the religious service will also be visited by ordinary citizens, who are actively registering for the event. Nazym Zhangazinova, Spokesperson for the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, said that the number of expected visitors to the prayer service is growing every hour.
“First of all, the number of delegations to the Congress has increased threefold, which says a lot,” she opined. “This is the first major global event since the pandemic. Once the first part of the congress is over, Pope Francis will hold the Holy Mass at the Expo site at 4:15 pm. Pilgrims from all over the world are expected to gather today. They came from Europe, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia to pray with the Pope. In addition, residents of other cities of Kazakhstan are visiting our capital as well. The largest number of pilgrims arrived from the Karagandy region.”
Zhangazinova added that such a global event will have a positive impact on the country's tourism and investment potential.
“The Pope himself is traveling with his delegation, which is approximately a thousand additional people. I think that this will have a positive impact on Kazakhstan’s tourism development. The delegation is accompanied by media representatives from all over the world. These are over 180 journalists and representatives of such media giants as CNN, Euronews, Bloomberg and Al Jazeera. Thus, the whole world will talk about Kazakhstan. This is a great opportunity to attract investment to our country,” she added.
