Pontiff’s prayer
Moving meeting with Rohingya refugees.
Pope Francis begs Rohingya refugees for forgiveness.
Pope Francis began wrapping up his Asian trip yesterday with a visit to an orphanage and home for the disabled run by Mother Teresa’s order and a meeting with Bangladeshi priests and nuns.
At the “Mother Teresa” home yesterday, two little girls in floral dresses grabbed Francis’ hand and walked him through the courtyard.
He was nearly mobbed by nuns in the Missionaries of Charity trademark blue-trimmed saris.
Francis’ final day in Bangladesh came after an earlier emotional encounter with Rohingya Muslim refugees.
Pronouncing “Rohingya” in public for the first time on the trip, Francis begged their forgiveness for the “indifference of the world” to their plight.
He said: “The presence of God today also is called ‘Rohingya’.”
After meeting 16 refugees who had been forced to flee their homes in Burma he said: “Your tragedy is very hard, very great, but it has a place in our hearts.
“In the name of all those who have persecuted you, who have harmed you, in the face of the world’s indifference, I ask for your forgiveness,” he said, grasping their hands and listening to their stories.
Among the refugees was Shawkat Ara, a 12-year-old Rohingya orphan who broke down in tears shortly after the Pope spoke to her.
“My parents were killed. I don’t have any joy,” she said, recounting how she had lost her entire family in an attack by the military in Burma.
More than 620,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee Bangladesh since August in what the UN and human rights groups say is a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing by the Burmese military.
The presence of the Rohingya in Burma is a highly sensitive and polarising issue, with the ethnic minority claiming they have lived there for centuries but the Yangon government insisting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and referring to them as “Bengalis”.
— Daily Telegraph, AAP