Pope supports Burmese Bishops

By Joe Jesauss
POPE JOHN PAUL II told leaders of Myanmar's minority Catholic population last week to up missionary efforts in the politically turbulent country. The Church in Myanmar or Burma, as it was before the illegal military government overturned the democratically-elected Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi is, according to His Holiness, "missionary by its very nature".
The Burmese Bishops, who met the Pope on a visit to the Vatican, were encouraged to put into practice their plans to establish a national missionary campaign, to include an association of lay missionaries, by the year 2000.
His Holiness told the Bishops: "No part of the people of God can feel exempt from the task of proclaiming the Good News to the whole of creation."
He said that their plans for Myanmar are "eloquent -signs of that missionary spirit which is the guarantee that your hearts beat in unison with the needs of the universal Church".
The Pope also warned against the potential for "militant fundamentalism" in Catholic missionary work. Myanmar's religious majority is Buddhist. Islam is the other main religion in the country. Just one per cent of the population are practising Catholics, some 500,000 in total.
The Pope's call for a dynamic missionary push comes at a time when Christians around the world notably in Egypt and Kuwait are subject to intolerance.