Pope Francis told Sri Lankans seeking reconciliation after two-and-a-half decades of civil war that, before they can forgive each other, they must repent of their own sins.
"Only when we come to understand, in light of the Cross, the evil we are capable of, and have even been a part of, can we experience true remorse and true repentance. Only then can we receive the grace to approach one another in true contrition, offering and seeking true forgiveness," the Pope said on Wednesday at a prayer service in the northern jungle town of Madhu.
He had travelled 160 miles in a helicopter from the capital city of Colombo to visit the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, which houses a statue of Mary venerated by Sri Lankans since the sixteenth century.
During the 26-year struggle between government forces and rebels from the country's Tamil minority, which ended in 2009, both sides recognised the area around the shrine as a demilitarised zone, which served as a sanctuary for thousands of war refugees. However, in 2008, the historic statue had to be removed temporarily from the shrine when it came under crossfire.
The 300,000 people assembled for today's visit included families who had lost members during what he described as a "long conflict which tore open the heart of Sri Lanka."
He described the shrine as "our mother's house," where "every pilgrim can feel at home," and where members of the country's two main ethnic groups, "Tamil and Sinhalese alike, come as members of one family."
"Just as her statue came back to her shrine of Madhu after the war, so we pray that all her Sri Lankan sons and daughters may come home to God in a renewed spirit of reconciliation and fellowship," the pope said.
The prayer service stressed national unity, with prayers in both the Tamil and Sinhalese languages. Pope Francis also released a dove as a sign of peace.
Earlier in the day at a Mass to canonise Sri Lanka’s first saint he stressed the need for Sri Lankans to transcend religious divisions in the name of reconciliation.
He was speaking in front of half a million people on the Colombo seafront.
Joseph Vaz, a seventeenth-century missionary from Goa who is credited with keeping the Catholic Church alive during persecution by Dutch colonisers arrived in Sri Lanka in 1687. He had to disguise himself as a beggar to avoid detection and spent several years in jail accused of being a spy.
Francis said that Vaz was a model of reconciliation. “Saint Joseph shows us the importance of transcending religious divisions in the service of peace,” he said.
Introducing Francis, Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said that it was “opportune” that the Pope was visiting Sri Lanka. “We are a nation which suffered immensely for 30 long years. The war with weapons is over… and now, the war of reconstruction, reconciliation has begun.”
Photos: CNS
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