AHC: Create or convert a Catholic Caucasian or South Russian nationality

I'm reading Trancaucasia (an interesting mid-19th century work by a German aristocrat) and it got me wondering - how can we add yet another flavor to the Caucasian mix? Namely, how can we create a Catholic ethnicity, or convert one of the OTL ethnic groups to the Catholic church? ADDED: Let's expand it a little to include South Russia (more or less the Southern Federal District), just to make things easier - maybe!

OTL Eastern Rite Catholics could perhaps be a nucleus, although the Armenians are the only ones that seem to claim any real numbers.

Can we somehow get enough Genoese immigration/assimilation along the coast to create an enduring Caucasian Italian ethnicity?

Any other ideas? Have at it!
 
Circassians have a tendency to universally convert. That may do the trick. But how to get them Catholic is a whole thing....
 
Circassians have a tendency to universally convert. That may do the trick. But how to get them Catholic is a whole thing....

Could something be done with the Crusades? The Crusaders never made an impact that far to the north (so far as I know) but maybe some tweaking could allow it?
 
I wish you luck with this thread. I started one just the other day about an eastern Christian people going Latin and it went nowhere.
 
A wholly Uniate(?) eastern rites catholicism Ukraine? Or Belarus?

The Polish-Lituanian Commonwealth could be a factor for this on the european russia(s) side...
 
I thought that they were and still mostly are atleast nominally Muslims.

I did a little snooping on Wikipedia (yeah, I know) and found the following:

1333 - In his letter, Pope John XXII (to the king Zichia (Circassia) Verzacht ["Верзахта" in Cyrillic script]), the Rome (Avignon) Pontiff thanks the Governor of Circassians for his assistance in implementing the Christian faith among the Adygs (Circassians).[10] Verzacht's power and status was so high that his example was followed by the rest of the Circassian princes: They took the Roman Catholic faith.
 
The mongols were at least somewhat receptive to christianity, so why not starting it with the Golden Horde? In OTL the convert to Islam as a way to undercut the Ilkhanate so if the Ilkhanate convert to Islam from the start they may convert to catholicism, Afterward if you manage to have them holding the Pontic Steppes (far from impossible) you might just get some kind of national identity to emerge and culturally unite all the nomadic tribes of the region, after that to give them catholicism as a state and popular religion is not at all a big stretch.
 
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