Pope
Francis,78 arrived in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka on Tuesday at the start of a week long Asian tour to deliver a message of inter religious harmony that will resonate
within the island nation recovering from years of ethnic conflict and across
the world in the wake of the militant violence in Paris.
According to AFP, he was
welcomed under sunny skies by Sri Lanka’s new president, Maithripala Sirisena,
who was sworn in Friday after a big electoral upset. Traditional drummers and
dancers from both the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups, and a children’s choir
sang a song of welcome in both languages of Sri Lanka — as well as English and
Italian.
On Jan 14th,
Francis will canonize Sri Lanka’s first saint, the Rev. Giuseppe Vaz, a 17th
century missionary credited with having revived the Catholic faith among both
Sinhalese and Tamils amid persecution by Dutch colonial rulers, who were
Calvinists.
On
Thursday he heads to the Philippines on Jan 19, the largest Roman Catholic
country in Asia and third-largest in the world, for the final leg of the journey.
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