As Myanmar grapples with Rohingya crisis, Pope stresses unity in diversity

YANGON: Pope Francis met leaders of several faiths in majority- Buddhist Myanmar yesterday, stressing the importance of ‘unity in diversity’ but making no mention the Muslim Rohingya who have fled en masse to Bangladesh after a military crackdown.

The pope held private talks with Myanmar’s military chief in Yangon on Monday, the first day of a visit fraught with tension after the United States accused the Southeast Asian nation of “ethnic cleansing” against its Muslim Rohingya people.

The leader of the Roman Catholic church will also travel to Bangladesh, where more than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to escape what Amnesty International has dubbed “crimes against humanity”.

Myanmar’s army has denied accusations of murder, rape, torture and forced displacement that have been made against it.

“Unity is always a product of diversity,” Francis told leaders of the Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Jewish and Christian faiths in Yangon, according to Vatican officials who gave a briefing on the 40-minute meeting.

“Everyone has their values, their riches as well as their differences, as each religion has its riches, its traditions, its riches to share. And this can only happen if we live in peace, and peace is constructed in a chorus of differences.”

Aye Lwin, a prominent Muslim leader who was at the meeting, told Reuters he had asked the pope to appeal to Myanmar’s political leaders “to rescue the religion that we cherish, which could be hijacked by a hidden agenda”.

Only about 700,000 of Myanmar’s 51 million people are Roman Catholic. Thousands of them have travelled from far and wide to see him and more than 150,000 people have registered for a mass that Francis will say in Yang today.