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| Pope Francis wears a saffron-colored Buddhist robe as he attends the Inter-religious Encounter at the Bmich in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jan. 13, 2015 (Stefano Rellandini /Reuters). |
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Pope Francis paid a
surprise visit to a Buddhist temple on [Jan. 13, 2015], capping a trip to [predominantly Buddhist] Sri
Lanka where he told huge crowds that religions must unite to heal the
country’s war wounds.
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| Pope John Paul II with Thai Buddhists |
The only other visit by a pope to a Buddhist temple was made by Pope John Paul during a trip to [Buddhist] Thailand in 1984.
Vatican
spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope briefly stopped at
Colombo’s Mahabodhi Temple to meet Ven. Banagila Upatissa, a Buddhist leader
who had invited him when they met on Tuesday at an inter-religious
meeting.
“The pope listened with great respect”
as the Theravada Buddhist monks were singing and [chanting], Lombardi said. He said that in
honor of the occasion, the monks opened a sacred container holding precious Buddhist
relics which is normally unsealed only once a year.
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| Interesting religion you have here, monks. |
The
spokesman said that during the pope’s 20-minute visit, which was not on
his schedule, Pope Francis listened intently as the monks explained aspects
of Buddhism in a room where there was a statue of the Buddha.
Francis,
who has made inter-religious dialogue a plank of his papacy, has
already been to mosques during trips to Istanbul and Jerusalem.
During
his two-day trip the pope has
stressed the role of religion to help
reconciliation after the 26-year
civil war that ended in 2009 and killed up to 100,000 people. Sri Lanka is about:
- 70 percent Theravada Buddhist
- 13
percent Hindu (Tamil)
- 10 percent Muslim (like its predominantly Muslim neighbor the Maldives)
- 7 percent Catholic (from Portuguese missionary work)
- .01 percent or less aboriginal Nagas.
Earlier,
Pope Francis gave Sri Lanka its first saint at a seafront mass for more than half
a million people in Colombo, the capital, calling 17th century missionary Joseph Vaz
a model of reconciliation.
 |
| Virg (Kwan) Yin Mary, French art |
He held up Saint Vaz as
an example of tolerance as Sri Lanka recovers from the war between
mainly Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus (which was the longest running civil war in Asia).
Vaz
was born in 1651 in India’s Goa, then a Portuguese colony. He traveled
south [to Sri Lanka, the island off the tip of India] at the age of 36, dressed as a beggar after hearing about the
persecution of Catholics by the Dutch. He worked for years under the
protection of a Buddhist king.
Statue of Mary
 |
| Female Jesus=Church Goddess |
Also
on [Jan. 13, 015], Pope Francis flew by helicopter to Madhu, in the Hindu north of the island (closest to the tip of Tamil Nadu, India), to
preach forgiveness for the “evil” committed in the war and visit a
Catholic shrine that was
shelled.
It
was the first visit by a pope to the predominantly Hindu region that
contains a large Catholic minority and was the scene of fierce fighting
between the Sri Lankan Army and Tamil Tiger separatist rebels seeking an autonomous homeland they called Eelam.
In a prayer at the Church of Our Lady
of Madhu, Pope Francis denounced the conflict that “tore open the heart” of
Sri Lanka and drove home the central message of his two-day trip: Religions need to work together to heal the wounds of war.
“May
all people here find inspiration and strength to build a future of
reconciliation, justice, and peace for all the children of this beloved
land,” he said in English.
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| Feminine icons of the Church |
The
shrine containing a 400-year old statue of Mary is the most venerated
Catholic site on the island.
It is also visited by followers of other
religions but was kept out of bounds for years by fighting.
After
landing, the pope drove to the shrine in an open jeep, leaning out
frequently to touch the heads of the faithful lining the roads, many
using parasols for shade.
 |
| Virg Yin, Goddess of Compassion, Sri Lanka |
In 1999, shells
slammed into the church, killing some 40 people who had sought refuge
there. Since the end of the war, the north has undergone reconstruction,
but divisions still run deep. The region gets few visits from world
leaders.
The Vatican also said former President Mahinda
Rajapaksa, who invited the pope to make the visit to the country but was
defeated in [the 2015] election last week, paid a courtesy call to the pontiff
at the Vatican embassy where he is staying.
More
Christianity in Buddhist/Hindu Sri Lanka?
 |
| Portuguese Missionary St. Francis Xavier |
Christianity in Sri Lanka is not well known before the 16th century although some local traditions claim that
Saint Thomas the Apostle was active in the island (
Christianity in Sri Lanka on Discover Sri Lanka).
The newly converted Christians were under persecution under both the king of Jaffna (Ibid.) and the
Dutch (
Ceylon, Catholic Encyclopedia). During this time the Catholics regrouped to form a church in
Mantai installing a statue of
Our Lady of Good Health in a shrine.
The Mary shrine in Madhu
The Dutch invasion and the persecution of the Catholic Church in 1670 (Ibid.), led to 20 Catholic families fleeing from Mantai, along with the statue of Mary in that church to a safer locale of Madhu
(
Fr. S.K. Devarajah, Monument of miracles, Sunday Times, Sri Lanka).
About the same time another 700 Catholics migrated from the Jaffna
peninsula into Wanni forests. When these two communities met in Madhu,
they installed a new shrine with the statue.
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(Noisey, April 23, 2015) In the first episode of the series Under the Influence, Noisey goes from the New York City streets of the Lower East Side all the way to South Korea to examine one of the most distinctive genres to sprout from the concrete of NYC: hardcore. Along the way, viewers meet with everyone from tattoo shop owners to chefs to government workers -- all of them inspired by the teachings at musical meccas like CBGB’s and A7 -- who found ways to apply the lessons learned from the scene to their own lives.
During
his two-day trip the pope has
stressed the role of religion to help reconciliation after the 26-year
civil war that ended in 2009 and killed up to 100,000 people. Sri Lanka is about:
