Pope preaches forgiveness and healing of old wounds for people in Myanmar

Pope Francis urged Myanmar's long- suffering ethnic minorities to resist the temptation to exact revenge for the hurt they have endured, preaching a message of forgiveness on Wednesday to a huge crowd in his first public Mass in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

Local authorities estimated that about 150,000 people turned out at Yangon's Kyaikkasan Ground park for the Mass, but the crowd seemed far larger and included faithful bearing flags from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, among other places. Francis has said his aim in coming to Myanmar is to minister to its Catholic community, which numbers around 660,000, or just over 1 percent of the population of about 52 million.

In his first public comments on Tuesday Francis told Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other government authorities that the country's future lay in respecting the rights of all its people, "none excluded", but he refrained from mentioning the Rohingya by name.

"I know that many in Myanmar bear the wounds of violence, wounds both visible and invisible," Francis told the crowd in Italian that was translated into Burmese. Although he said the temptation is to respond with revenge, he urged a response of "forgiveness and compassion."

"The way of revenge is not the way of Jesus," he said, speaking from an altar erected on a traditional Buddhist-style stage.