"They are killing us in Burma," cries a Rohingya refugee, without going into further details. Pope Francis landed in Rangoon on Monday to denounce this injustice before a silent international community. Some Burmese generals are persecuting this Muslim minority to gain popular support, and thus weaken, it is said, the Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. award . The first trip of a pope to Burma has had a similar origin to the one made in the summer of 2013, when refugees were drowning in the sea. This image led him to fly to the island of Lampedusa to ask from there before Europe: "Cain, where is your brother?". And then before the European Parliament: "You cannot turn the Mediterranean into a huge cemetery!". Also in April 2016, when the agreement of repatriation between Turkey and the European Union turned the refugee camp on the island of Lesbos into a prison, Francis was also there to support those who had been left homeless and without a homeland by the advance of the Islamic State. For his support for minorities and the fight against poverty, for the defense of religious freedom and in the face of the threat of violence.

"Reality is best known from the peripheries and not from the center," said Pope Francis in his visit to a Roman neighborhood parish at the beginning of his pontificate. This is his method and his strategy: start with the marginal and unknown to put it at the center of attention. The "ethnic cleansing" coldly perpetrated by the Burmese generals against this ethnic group leads him to travel now to the scene of the tragedy. They have also been successfully infiltrating Buddhist monasteries for some time now with a violent and nationalist version of this religion, as happened before with Islamic fundamentalism or with some violent versions of liberation theology. Francis is the only world leader committed to defend an ethnic minority, in a Buddhist country controlled by military friends of Beijing, as the new superpower seeks an exit to the Indian Ocean through Myanmar. Francis defends the dignity of the victims, for a reason of humanity, regardless of their religion.

The Catholic Church in Burma accounts for only 1.3% of the population, although it enjoys a great prestige for its pacifying and reconciliatory spirit. Myanmar has less than 1% of Christians, while 90% are Buddhists. Already for six decades the northern territory has been experiencing a war status of the Kachin minority, one of the most Christian in Myanmar. But almost nobody knows it outside a country that has been closed in on itself for half a century. The Pope wants to break this conspiracy of silence and put this painful status in the international spotlight. Both Francis and the Muslim religious leaders want to disavow a minority of fanatics bent on breaking coexistence. Perhaps in this way he can attract the attention of the United Nations, which is sometimes somewhat selective with its interests. That is why the motto of the papal visit is Love and peace.

Similarly, the motto of the visit to Bangladesh (the memory of the trip of St. John Paul II in 1986 is still alive) is Harmony and peace. There, Christians make up barely 0.3% of the total population, while the majority (60%) are Muslims. Christianity in these lands is a small mustard seed of peace, but it is very active and can grow as it did before in these lands. This is the dream of the missionary pope, who knows that Asia is the future. The misery in these two countries jumps to the eyes, despite their natural wealth. In Bangladesh, for example, people work for 22 euros a month: they manufacture our low-cost clothing. The Church also works with the poorest. At summary, Francis is committed to peace and the most positive aspects of the Buddhist and Muslim traditions, and wants to force both countries to seek and find solutions. And perhaps also the United Nations. We should pray for this impossible mission statement of Pope Francis.