Colombo prepares for the visit of Pope Francis

Tuesday, 13 January 2015 01:46 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: Sri Lankan Police and Church officials were rushing on Monday to finish preparations ahead of the visit of Pope Francis. Various groups were inspecting progress at Galle Face Green, where the public mass will be held. The pope mobile did a test run through the area where some 400,000 people are due to gather on Wednesday (January). “Yeah, of course by now everything is already settled and arranged. Now we see even in the Galle Face Green in all the squares and particularly the given places, all the teams are there and they are looking after the final movements and are getting ready,” said Father Nuwan Roderiguez, one of the many Sri Lankans who will be taking part in the mass and related events. Preparations for the papal visit started in earnest late last week after a presidential election which saw the stunning defeat of then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

On the streets where the Pontiff is due to pass in the pope mobile as he makes his way to Colombo city centre from the airport on Tuesday (13), local residents were putting up decorative flags. “We as the villagers here are very much privileged when it happens to be him going on our street because there are villages where there are not privileged to be like this, where we being here itself, we must do our level best to welcome him,” said Catholic Colombo resident Gerald Polyaniyo Rajasingham. The main purpose of the Sri Lanka visit is to canonise Joseph Vaz, a Catholic priest credited with rebuilding the Church there in the 17th and 18th centuries after Dutch occupiers imposed Calvinism as the official religion. But the 78-year-old Pope, who is visiting Asia for the second time in less than six months, is also expected to talk about issues such as inter-religious dialogue, poverty and climate change. The trip comes at a time when Sri Lanka is recovering from a brutal civil war which lasted three decades, left around 100,000 people dead and ended just five years ago. Reconciliation efforts between the Tamils and Sinhalese have been slow. Vatican officials say that despite its minority status, the Church in Sri Lanka can help reconciliation because it includes members of both ethnic groups – Sinhalese and Tamil. Francis will also preach a message of reconciliation during a visit on Tuesday to Madhu in the north, which is the centre of a 26-year civil war that ended with the defeat of ethnic Tamil rebels in 2009. “He has chosen to visit this minority Catholic community and this small island and, therefore. We see this as a very significant event and that is why our people are looking forward to the visit,” said Father Siril Gamini Fernando, the Director of the National Catholic Communication Centre. The Indian Ocean island nation is about 70% Buddhist, 13% Hindu, 10% Muslim and only about 7% Catholic. After Sri Lanka, the Pope heads for the Philippines. Up to six million people are expected to attend mass there.