He campaigned for peace in Myanmar, the former Burma, the troubled Southeast Asian country that has always been torn by conflict in its 70-year history. All the more so now, as the country – much loved and often cited by Pope Francis – is torn by civil war after the military coup of 2021, and was wounded by the devastating earthquake of March 28. Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, one of Burma’s largest cities, is a man committed to reconciliation in Asia and, throughout his episcopal ministry, has promoted the defence of human dignity, human rights, freedom of conscience and religion. He always kept an eye on the welfare of his people and the good of the Asian peoples, even when the positions he took provoked hostility from politicians or criticism from cultural, political and media circles in the West.
The 77-year-old Cardinal was born in 1948 and was baptised in the small village of Monhla, in the centre of the country, a village that is no longer there, razed to the ground by the Burmese army, which bombed entire regions inhabited by civilians to try to break the resistance of the People’s Defence Forces, which came into being in the aftermath of the coup. He was attracted by Don Bosco’s charisma and approached the Salesian congregation, completing his path of vocational discernment and then professing to be a priest, son of St John Bosco. It is precisely this special concern for the younger generations, typical of the Salesians, that today leads Cardinal Bo to be one of the voices publicly calling – even to the generals of the ruling junta – for an end to the war, using language that is always imaginative: his vision embraces the demands of a people that, especially with its young people, has rebelled against violence and oppression and has begun an unequal struggle against a brutal power and an army that is one of the most powerful in Asia.
Bo’s concern for young people reflects a particularly significant demographic fact: Myanmar shares with many Southeast Asian countries a demographic composition in which young people between 17 and 35 years of age make up the majority of the population, a fact that makes Asia – like Africa – the “continent of the future” on the world stage, especially when contrasted with Europe where the demographic decline is eroding societies.
The Church – the Cardinal recalled several times – is called upon, with its limited possibilities, to be a source of hope and consolation”
In the aftermath of the coup, the Archbishop of Yangon had issued a heartfelt call for non-violence, asking the democracy movement not to choose the path of civil war as a way to justice against the coup and as a reaction to the killings of young protesters. ‘Violence leads to more violence’ he warned, almost foreseeing the current reality: after more than four years of civil war, the country finds itself devastated and annihilated, with with over 50,000 deaths, 3.8 million internally displaced persons and a collapsing education system. The young people ‘do not accept that hope is being stolen from them’, he explained to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, reiterating the idea of a Myanmar in which ‘every human being is truly a participant in fundamental rights and freedoms’, a country ‘in which ethnic and religious diversity is celebrated and where true peace is enjoyed’, a Myanmar – he reiterated – ‘in which the military lay down their arms, leave power and do what an army should do: protect, not attack, the people’.
In expressing this vision of the future, the Cardinal has made his own, to bring them to the attention of the Holy See and the universal Church, the demands of an entire continent, the vast and plural Asian continent, especially in the years in which he was called to lead the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, (Fabc), with the post of president that he held for two terms, until 2024. Appointed bishop by Pope John Paul II in 1990 and called to the purple by Pope Francis in 2015, his pastoral approach starts from what the current pontiff has called ‘the minority paradigm’, referring to places, regions or continents such as Asia where small existing Christian communities are considered as ‘alien’ or perceived as detrimental to the religious cohesion of a given nation, therefore persecuted or otherwise treated with discrimination or even hostility. Nationalist movements or authoritarian systems of government, wars or creeping conflicts make life difficult for many Christians and, in such a context, the Church – the Cardinal recalled several times – is called upon, with its limited possibilities, to be a source of hope and consolation, to offer support to the faithful and to promote with meekness its vision of dialogue, acceptance of neighbour, unconditional charity.
Connections
His vision of fraternitas was clearly expressed during a visit to the Marian shrine in Nyaunglebin, Myanmar: “Drawing inspiration from Mary, we pray that the conflicting parties in Myanmar may come together and this sacred place become a refuge of peace and reconciliation, where enemies embrace each other as brothers and sisters”. With this spirit, in full harmony with what Pope Francis wrote in the encyclical Fratelli tutti (All Brothers), the Cardinal wanted to expose himself and expend his influence also in relations with the power, even the oppressor and persecutor: the meetings with the coup general Min Aung Hlaing have aroused criticism at home and abroad, but in those meetings Bo wanted to read Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of Peace, sending a strong and clear message to the rulers.
Similarly, the Archbishop of Yangon has always offered support to Aung San Suu Kuy, the Nobel Peace Prize woman who led the last democratic season in the former Burma, who is still under house arrest. He also supported her on the long-standing issue of the exodus of the Muslim population of the Rohingya, 700,000 of whom were forced to leave the country by the Burmese army in an ethnic cleansing operation. The leader, and with her the Cardinal, did not want to be complacent about a criminal operation – an accusation that came from the West – but kept the dialogue with the government open and tried to use the weapons of diplomacy to bring justice to that wounded humanity.
‘It used to be one of the freest and most open Asian cities. They have turned it into a police state’, a fact that ‘breaks the heart’”
The same approach was seen in the delicate relationship with mainland China. In 2021, Bo celebrated the Day of Prayer for the Church in China, established in 2007 by Benedict XVI, and as president of the FABC wanted to extend the initiative by making it a “Week of Prayer” for China. And while the Holy See renewed its two-year agreement with Beijing on the joint appointment of bishops, Bo hoped that “as it continues to grow as a global power, China will become a force for good and a protector of the rights of the world’s most vulnerable and marginalised” and will be able to distance itself from practices – denounced by Cardinal Bo himself in previous years – such as oppressing religious freedom, destroying churches, locking up Muslims in forced labour camps, and stifling the freedoms of lawyers, dissidents, and intellectuals. And when in Hong Kong, on May 11, 2022, 80-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, was among the dissidents arrested, Bo commented laconically: ‘It used to be one of the freest and most open Asian cities. They have turned it into a police state’, a fact that ‘breaks the heart’.
Asia
With his voice, from one of the world’s peripheries, the challenges of the vast and plural continent of Asia, ‘a world that encompasses different worlds’, where more than 60% of the world’s entire population, some 4.8 billion people, live, come to the Consistory (and will be present in an eventual Conclave). With the Oriental and Protestant Churches, Asian Christians number about 400 million (data from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity) in an area of the world that is the cradle of great civilisations and religious traditions (such as Buddhism Hinduism, Confucianism). However, in many parts of Asia, poverty and natural disasters complicate the lives of the populations, and thus the work and life of the Church is also grappling with challenges such as the exodus from rural areas, migration, family disintegration, uprooting and disorientation of young people. In such a framework, key points for Cardinal Bo and for Christians in Asia are practices such as synodality and interreligious dialogue, which comes to be an “extended synodality”, that means full collaboration with communities of other religious faiths. The profound ability to enter into empathic relations with the “different from oneself” – honed in a context characterised by pluralism – may represent an added value, a quality that may also be valid in Rome.
His pastoral approach starts from what the current pontiff has called ‘the minority paradigm’, referring to places, regions or continents such as Asia where small existing Christian communities are considered as ‘alien’ or perceived as detrimental to the religious cohesion of a given nation, therefore persecuted or otherwise treated with discrimination or even hostility”