Pope urges forgiveness as he avoids term 'Rohingya' again
The Pope told thousands of Catholics at mass in Myanmar to forgive the ethnic violence as he avoided saying "Rohingya" again.
Thursday 30 November 2017 12:12, UK
The Pope has urged tens of thousands of Catholics to forgive instead of taking revenge for ethnic violence.
Leading mass in Myanmar's commercial capital, the Pontiff once again opted not to use the term "Rohingya" Muslims on the advice of his Catholic Cardinal in the country.
This is despite the growing claims the Myanmar military is carrying out a brutal ethnic cleansing of the ethnic minority. Instead he preached forgiveness and reconciliation and pressed his hosts to respect human rights for all the minorities in Myanmar.
For the most part, the estimated 150,000 Catholics who turned out to see him in Yangon, agreed with his decision to avoid stepping into the political arena.
"His job is a religious one," one man told Sky News.
:: Pope Francis avoids saying 'Rohingya' as he calls for 'justice and respect' in Myanmar
"We are so happy he came here and we are very happy he spoke of reconciliation."
Another told us: "If he spoke that word [Rohingya], it would cause problems…..and chaos."
Many of the Catholics - themselves a religious minority group which has suffered persecution in parts of the country - feared a negative backlash if Pope Francis was seen to use the term to describe an ethnic people which his hosts do not recognise.
The Myanmar authorities prefer to label the Rohingya Muslims as Bengalis to give the impression they are originally from Bangladesh and therefore illegal immigrants in Myanmar. This is despite many being in Myanmar for decades.
The Pope has twice referred to the Rohingya, speaking of how his "brothers" are being persecuted simply for following their faith. But his use of the description Rohingya has been only outside of the country.
On Thursday he travels to Bangladesh after a morning mass to the youth in Yangon and all eyes will be on whether he steps up his criticism once he is there where more than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to safety.
Many of those who have left Myanmar have spoken of multiple rapes by the Myanmar soldiers as well as arson, executions and brutality.
Sky News travelled in the middle of the night to a beach in north Rakhine State - where the worst atrocities have been taking place - and gained video evidence of thousands of Rohingya Muslims being forced onto beaches there and left to die.
:: Hidden: Rohingya camp that the Pope will not see on Myanmar visit
Many were in a very distressed state and spoke again of their homes being burned and how they'd fled to avoid being slaughtered by the Myanmar troops.
But monks from an extreme anti-Muslim group in Myanmar which claims to have hundreds of thousands of followers roundly dismissed the growing claims of ethnic cleansing. The Ma Ba Tha group said the violence was ignited by Muslim militants who attacked police posts in late August and those appearing to flee were in fact terrorist or families of terrorists and 'lying' about the atrocities.
The United Nations accepts there have been attacks by Muslim militants but argue the three-month bloody crackdown by the Myanmar soldiers is wildly out of proportion and amounts to a 'textbook example of ethnic cleansing'.