Pope faces a decision: whether to say ‘Rohingya’ in visit

BANGKOK — In August, responding to the first reports of Rohingya Muslims fleeing an army-led crackdown in Myanmar, Pope Francis called for prayers for “our Rohingya brethren.”

“Let all of us ask the Lord to save them, and to raise up men and women of goodwill to help them, who shall give them their full rights,” Francis told a gathering of pilgrims at Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Square.

As the pope begins a visit to Myanmar Monday, the Rohingyas’ plight has spiraled into one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises. More than 600,000 people have fled to Bangladesh to escape a systematic campaign of killing, rape and arson that United Nations officials and international human rights groups have described as ethnic cleansing.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson echoed that assessment Wednesday after a visit to Myanmar, saying that “no provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities” carried out by security forces and Buddhist vigilantes against the Rohingya.

Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, has portrayed himself as a champion of the downtrodden and of interfaith dialogue, and has repeatedly voiced concern for the Rohingya. He faces perhaps the most delicate diplomatic task of his four-year papacy in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, where the powerful military establishment and a civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi refuse to list the Rohingya among the country’s 135 ethnic groups, claiming that they migrated illegally from Bangladesh.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, the Catholic archbishop of the largest city, Yangon, has advised the pope while in Myanmar not to utter the word “Rohingya,” a term that Suu Kyi and the generals do not acknowledge.

But human rights groups are urging Francis — both in his public sermons and private meetings with Suu Kyi and the commander of the military, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing — to use the term to show solidarity with a group that Myanmar has denied citizenship and methodically stripped of basic rights, including the freedom to move, work and marry.