Pope Francis called for peace and reconciliation as he delivered Mass to around 150,000 Catholics in Myanmar’s commercial hub Yangon on Wednesday, as part of his first papal trip to the country. “I know that many in Myanmar bear the wounds of violence, wounds both visible and invisible,” he told those gathered for the open-air mass.
“Yet the way of revenge is not the way of Jesus.” Most of
Myanmar’s nearly 700,000 Catholics are ethnic minorities from the country’s
restive fringes, where a number of ethnic armed groups are still at war with
government forces. Michael Salai Soe Aung, a 40-year-old from Myanmar’s western
Chin State who attended the Mass, told dpa: “I’m so happy I can’t describe my
feelings with words. I believe the pope brings peace wherever he goes.” The
pope has faced pressure during his trip to confront alleged atrocities against
the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
Su Hlaing from
Yangon also attended the Mass on Wednesday and said she hoped the pope’s visit
could bring peace to Rakhine. On
Tuesday, the pope appeared alongside civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has
faced international condemnation over a military operation that has sent
620,000 Rohingyas fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, in what the U.S. and
UN have described as “ethnic cleansing.” In an address on Tuesday in the
capital Naypyitaw, the pope urged a “commitment to justice and respect for
human rights” in Myanmar but did not refer to the Rohingya by name.
He also refrained
from uttering the word on Wednesday. The
Catholic Church in Myanmar had urged the pontiff to respect the views of the
majority of Myanmar’s population, who do not consider Rohingya to be citizens
and call them “Bengali,” inferring they are from Bangladesh. The pope is
currently on a six-day trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh and will travel to Dhaka
on Thursday where he will remain until Saturday.
NAN
No comments:
Post a Comment