POPE SEEKS FORGIVENESS
He apologises to refugees in Bangladesh for not using ‘Rohingya’ while in Myanmar
DHAKA
POPE Francis ended a diplomatically tricky trip to Asia yesterday, seeking the forgiveness of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh after his controversial decision to not directly refer to their plight when he visited their homeland, Myanmar.
On the last day of his visit to Bangladesh, the pope went to a home here founded by Mother Teresa for orphans, unwed mothers and destitute elderly.
In a speech to around 7,000 young Catholics, Muslims and followers of other religions, the pope spoke about welcoming and accepting those who “act and think differently than ourselves”.
“When a people, a religion or a society turns into a ‘little world’, they lose the best that they have and plunge into a self-righteous mentality of ‘I am good and you are bad’,” Francis said at the Notre Dame College, founded by Catholic priests.
He also asked his young listeners to “not spend the whole day playing with your phone and ignoring the world around you!”
Francis said he was pleased by an inter-religious meeting on Friday night, where he had an emotional meeting with refugees from Myanmar, and then used the word “Rohingya” for the first time, saying they had God within them and should be respected.
He also sought their forgiveness in the name of all who persecuted them. Previously, in Myanmar, he followed the advice of church officials, who said his use of the word could prompt a backlash against Christians and hurt the country’s democracy.
Mother Teresa opened the Dhaka home in the 1970s to look after Bengali women, who became pregnant as a result of rape by Pakistani soldiers during the war of independence.
The pope made an impromptu address to nuns and priests at the home, where he praised Bangladesh — a Muslim-majority country where Catholics made up less than one per cent of its 169 million people — for having what he called some of the best interreligious relations in the world.
His words of appreciation had been welcomed by the country, which was home to around one million Rohingya refugees. Reuters