THE POPE’S

If he stays silent, he loses his moral authority, but if he makes a stand, he may put local Christians in danger, writes

periphery, whose rights Francis has made it his pastoral mission to champion, and whose plight he has used his papal platform to elevate.

The Myanmar trip would seem to present the pope an opportunity to reassert his status as the world’s moral compass by condemning the violence against the Rohingya. Many hope he will do just that.

The situation, as it were, is a political, sectarian and religious minefield that some supporters of Francis worry poses a no-win scenario even for a political operator as deft as he is.

The pope “risks either compromising his moral authority or putting in danger the Christians of that country”, the Rev Thomas J. Reese, a commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, which listed Myanmar as one of the worst countries in that category, wrote this past week in a column for the

“I have great admiration for the pope and his abilities, but someone should have talked him out of making this trip,” he wrote.

Reese argued that the pope’s usual, and admirable, willingness to call out injustice could put the country’s Christian minority in grave danger.

About 700,000 Roman Catholics live in Myanmar, representing little more than one per cent of the total population.

There are also Baptist Christians and Hindus, but the vast majority in the country, about 90 per cent, follow Theravada Buddhism, and the campaign against the Rohingya is wildly popular.

But, “If he is silent about the persecution of the Rohingya, he loses moral credibility”, said Reese.

Vatican spokesman, Greg Burke, said in a briefing this past week that Rohingya was “not a prohibited word”, adding that, while the pope takes the advice of Bo seriously, “we’ll see together” whether the pope uses the word.

“Let’s just say it’s very interesting diplomatically,” he said.

The reputational cost of silence on the persecution of the Rohingya is already being paid by Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Once the darling of rights activists during her years under house arrest, Suu Kyi was elected in 2015 with the goal of putting Myanmar on the path to stable democracy and settling disputes with the country’s many armed ethnic groups.

But, the military maintained control of the national security infrastructure, and Suu Kyi appears to have no power — and no voice — to stop the attacks on the Rohingya.

Bo, an ally of Suu Kyi’s, has argued that she remains the country’s best hope for democracy and that the pope, who is scheduled to meet her in the capital Naypyidaw, should show his support in the hopes of giving her more leverage to sway the military.

But, according to the Vatican, Bo also suggested that Francis meet Gen Min Aung Hlaing, commander of Myanmar’s powerful military and the architect of the ethnic cleansing. The meeting on Thursday is intended to make sure the military leader does not feel forgotten, but it also presents the pope’s greatest opportunity to have an impact on the humanitarian situation.

In Myanmar, Francis will seek out meetings with the persecuted. Today, he is to meet with representatives of religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians and what Burke, the Vatican spokesman, called a “small group” of Rohingya refugees.

On Thursday, the pope will go to Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have sought safety. Some are to meet with the pope that day in Dhaka, the capital.