In 1269 Kublai Khan sent a request from Peking to Rome for "a hundred wise men of the Christian religion...And so I shall be baptized, and when I shall be baptized all my baron and great men will be baptized, and their subjects baptized, and so there will be more Christian here than there are in your parts." The Mongols were then wavering in the choice of a religion. It might have been, as Kublai forecast, the greatest mass religious movement the world has ever seen. The history of all Asia would have been changed.

But what actually happened? Pope Gregory X answered by sending two Dominican friars. They got as far as Armenia, could endure no longer and returned home. So passed the greatest missionary opportunity in the history of the church.

Here is another retelling of this story: There were several direct exchanges of missions between the pope and the Great Khan. In 1266 Kublai entrusted the Polo brothers, two Venetian merchants, to carry a request to the pope for one hundred Christian scholars and technicians. The Polos met with Pope Gregory X (c. 1210–1276) in 1269 and received his blessing but no scholars. Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324), who accompanied his father on this trip, was probably the best-known foreign visitor ever to set foot in China. It is said that he spent the next seventeen years under Kublai Khan, including official service in the administration and trips through the provinces of Yunnan and Fukien. The accuracy of his descriptions of China was questioned, but the popularity of his journal generated great interest among Europeans for going east. Rabban Sauma, a monk born in Peking, crossed central Asia to the Il-Khan’s court in Mesopotamia in 1278 and was one of those whom the Mongols sent to Europe to seek Christian help against Islam. Under Kublai, the first direct contact and cultural exchange between China and the West had occurred (from https://gosouth.co.za/kublai-khan/).