Pope Francis will ignore warnings about not even mentioning the persecuted Rohingya minority when he visits Myanmar and Bangladesh next week, it has emerged, as a meeting with Rohingya refugees was added last minute to his schedule.
A face-to-face with the head of Myanmar's army, accused by the UN of committing atrocities against the Rohingya including mass rape, was also added as a late amendment to his programme.
The Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said on Wednesday that the pope's meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing will take place on November 30 in a church residence in Yangon.
Myanmar Cardinal Charles Maung Bo had talks with the pope in Rome on Saturday and suggested that he add a meeting with the general to the schedule for a trip that is proving to be one of the most politically sensitive since Francis was elected in 2013. Both the pope and the general agreed.
Some 600,000 Rohingya refugees, most of them Muslim and from Myanmar's northern Rakhine state, have fled to Bangladesh.
Burke said a small group of Rohingya refugees would be present at an inter-religious meeting for peace in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka on December 1.
Myanmar's government has denied most of the claims of atrocities against the Rohingya, and the army last week said its own investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by troops.
The pope will separately meet the country's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in the capital Naypyitaw, on November 28 in an encounter that was already on the schedule.
Briefing reporters on the trip, Burke gave no details of how the Rohingya who will meet the pope would be chosen. A source in Dhaka said the refugees would be able to tell the pope about their experiences.
Both events were not on the original schedule of the Novemer 26 - December 2 trip.
Bo, the cardinal from Myanmar, has advised the pope not to use the word Rohingya while in Myanmar because it is incendiary in the country where they are not recognised as an ethnic group.
Burke said the pope took the advice seriously but added: 'We will find out together during the trip ... it is not a forbidden word'.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
