Pontiff lands in Myanmar, set to meet army chief

The 80-year-old pontiff, the first to travel to Myanmar, was welcomed at the airport by children from different minority groups in bright, bejewelled clothes, who gave him flowers and received a papal embrace in return.

Nuns in white habits were among the devotees who have travelled from across the country in his honour, waving flags as his motorcade swept past the golden Shwedagon Pagoda to the archbishop's residence in downtown Yangon, where the pope will stay on Monday night.

"I saw the pope... I was so pleased, I cried!"Christina Aye Aye Sein, 48, told AFP after the pope's convoy was met by a warm but modest welcome in the non-Catholic country.

"His face looked very lovely and sweet... He is coming here for peace."

But these joyful scenes were in stark contrast to the gravity of the main issue that frames his trip.

Myanmar's military stands accused of waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims.

More than 620,000 of the persecuted minority have fled a crackdown in northern Rakhine state for neighbouring Bangladesh over the past three months.

In a last-minute change of schedule, the first official and highly anticipated meeting of Francis, a champion of refugee rights, will be on Monday evening with the powerful head of the military.

The pope has called the Rohingya his "brothers and sisters" in repeated entreaties to ease their plight.

'A few seconds'

On Tuesday, Francis will meet civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner whose lustre has faded because of her failure to speak up publicly for the Rohingya.

His speeches will be scrutinised by Buddhist hardliners for any mention of the word "Rohingya", an incendiary term in a country where the Muslim group are reviled and labelled "Bengalis" -- alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Speaking shortly before he left Rome, the pontiff said: "I ask you to be with me in prayer so that, for these peoples, my presence is a sign of affinity and hope."

Myanmar's estimated 700,000 Catholics make up just over one percent of the country's 51 million people and are scattered in far-flung corners of the nation, many of them roiled by conflict.

Around 200,000 Catholics are pouring into Myanmar's commercial capital Yangon ahead of a huge open-air mass on Wednesday.

"People came from all corners of the country, even if we could only see him for a few seconds," Sister Genevieve Mu, an ethnic Karen nun, told AFP.

"I feel very good and proud of our Catholic people and our government for opening the country for his visit."

Prayers for peace

The Rohingya crisis looms large over the pope's visit.

The army, which ran the country with an iron fist for nearly half a century, insists its Rakhine operation was a proportionate response to Rohingya "terrorists" who raided police posts in late August, killing at least a dozen officers.

But rights groups, the UN and the US have accused the army of using its operation as cover to drive out a minority it has oppressed for decades.

The deluge of desperate refugees arriving in Bangladesh have carried with them accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of troops and hardline Buddhist mobs.

Inside the country a different opinion dominates.

"If the pope did come and weigh in heavily on this issue, it would inflame tensions and it would inflame public sentiment," said Myanmar-based political analyst Richard Horsey.

Days before the pope's visit, Myanmar and Bangladesh inked a deal vowing to begin repatriating Rohingya refugees in two months.

jpeg Mpeg4-1280x720But details of the agreement -- including the use of temporary shelters for returnees, many of whose homes have been burned to the ground -- raise questions for Rohingya fearful of coming back without guarantees of basic rights.

Pope Francis will travel on to Bangladesh on Thursday, where he will meet a group of Rohingya Muslims in the capital Dhaka.

Nur Mohammad, a 45-year-old Rohingya imam at the Nayapara refugee camp in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, said he hoped the pope would tell the Myanmar government to accept Rohingya, "give citizenship to them and end all discriminations against them".