Pope Francis in Myanmar and Bangladesh

Pope Francis will be visiting Myanmar and Bangladesh beginning on Monday Nov. 28. He is the first pope to visit Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country of some 55 million people. Under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country’s top civilian leader, Myanmar has been the target of human rights groups who say the country is engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against some one million Rohingya migrants. How Francis addresses this issue will be closely watched. On Nov. 30, Pope Francis will fly to neighboring Bangladesh. Eighty-seven percent of its 156 million people are Muslim. Christians are a tiny minority of 600,000 believers, 350,000 of whom are Catholic.