Pope Francis must tread carefully in divided Sri Lanka

On 12 January Pope Francis will begin a three-day visit to Sri Lanka instigated by the Catholic Church, who invited him to canonise a seventeenth-century priest and missionary, Blessed Fr Joseph Vaz, as the country’s first saint. The visit comes at a key moment for Sri Lanka. Last week’s presidential election delivered a shock result with long-time leader Mahinda Rajapaksa unseated by his erstwhile ally, Maithripala Sirisena. Sri Lanka remains a bitterly divided country. At this crucial time, can we and should we expect the papal visit to make a difference? Five years after the end of the civil war, the minority Tamil population remain politically and economically marginalised by the Sinhala majority, of which both Rajapaksa and Sirisena are members. The country is some way