POPE TO VISIT MYANMAR FOR PEACE

Yangon: Pope Francis will talk peace on his to visit Myanmar, a Catholic church representative said today, a potentially highly charged trip during a refugee crisis that has seen 520,000 Rohingya Muslims pushed out of the country. The late November visit comes as western Rakhine state is devoured by communal violence that has sent unprecedented numbers of Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh. Myanmar’s army is accused of using a crackdown on militants to expel its Muslim Rohingya population — a persecuted minority the Pope has previously called “brothers and sisters”. Any comments seen to support the Rohingya could provoke a strong reaction from hardline Buddhist clerics and a Buddhist-majority public aggrieved at global support for the Muslim group.