Francis, hope and a warzone

As Pope Francis exhorted Sri Lankans to unify and confront the “evils” of their sectarian conflict, a Hindu from the teardrop-shaped island’s Tamil minority was hanging onto his every word. M.K. Rajini, a bank worker from the war-ravaged Jaffna peninsula, travelled hundreds of miles January 14, to receive a blessing from the pope at a church which was on the front line of Sri Lanka’s 37-year ethnic war. Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans from across the country’s ethnic and religious divide flocked to the service on at the Our Lady of Madhu church, which was badly damaged during the war. The pope called for forgiveness from victims of the conflict, which killed 100,000 people and devastated the Tamil-dominated north of the country.

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