Shenali D Waduge

The head of the Catholic Church and head of the sovereign nation known as Vatican City is to arrive in Sri Lanka in January 2015. It will be the 2^nd visit of a Pope to a majority Buddhist nation wherein Catholics comprise just over 1million of a 20million population of which 14million are Sinhalese Buddhists. It is also a good time for the Pope to make a long overdue apology for the crimes committed to Sri Lanka by the Church and the Portuguese.

What is unusual about the Vatican is that it is the only religion in the world to be granted the right to a sovereign state and the Pope is the head of the sovereign government (the Vatican). This makes the Pope in par with any President or Prime Minister of another sovereign country but while the heads of the other countries take care of the needs of all communities in their respective countries, as head of the Vatican, the Pope is concerned ONLY about the promotion and fostering of Roman Catholic faith. This differentiation is extremely important for no matter what speeches are given those have no legal binding to the real aims and objectives of the Church.

Has the Church and the Pope apologized for crimes committed by the Church in the name of religion. Yes.

The Pope has apologized to the Jews, Galileo, women, Europeans, Muslims killed by the Crusades, the Chinese for the role of the missionariies, the slave trade in Africa. Some apologies like the ones to Canada’s native people have come without mentioning what the crimes committed by the Church were. Some apologies as in the case of Galilieo came 359 years too late while the apology for the execution of religious reformer Jan Hus came 584 years later!

The apologies by the Church also reveals the atrocities the Church has been involved in and include : murder of 1.6million Jews, slave trade, male domination, burning people on the stake, Church stand against women’s rights, forcible removal of aboriginal children from their mothers, abuse towards Eskimos and native Indian Americans, sexual abuse by priests.

But why has the Pope not apologized to India for the Goa Inquisition and to Sri Lanka for 153 years of crimes?

The apology to India for the Goa Inquisition is yet to come and that inquisition was extended to Sri Lanka as well.  Is it too much to ask that Pope Francis arriving to a majority Buddhist nation that has not objected to the canonization of Joseph Vaz, should extend a gesture by apologizing for the crimes committed by the Church to the Buddhists in particular as well as to the Hindus and Muslims in Sri Lanka?

The right of Sri Lanka to seek apology from Pope Francis falls well within the declaration made by Pope John Paul II on 12 March 2000 when he said Christians have violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions’. We now want to hear from Pope Francis himself that these policies and attitudes have actually changed. We feel we are not asking too much.

Therefore, we feel both India and Sri Lanka deserve to be included into the Pope’s apology list.

The Portuguese Roman Catholics ruled Sri Lanka from 1505 to 1658. One Hundred and Fifty Threee Years the country suffered irreparable damage.

In case many jump to declare that these allegations are all hallucinations and figments of the imagination of non-Catholics, it would be good for critics to read the works of Fernao de Queiro, Friar Paulo da Trinidade whose historical chronicles corroborate with the local accounts.

The crimes committed in Sri Lanka were by the Roman Catholic Emperor of Portugal, His Viceroy in Goa & the Roman Catholic priests in Sri Lanka. Together these are the crimes they committed:

 These will be argued as things of the past to be forgotten but the very Christian countries of the world are seeking ‘accountability’ from Sri Lanka when having weathered 30 years of terror and eliminated that terror the people would like to move on. If ‘accountability’ is the witch hunt by mostly the EU bloc of nations, should they not admit to some of their sins as well? Is that logic too difficult to accept? There cant be a time bar on crimes especially the type of crimes that took place before the establishment of the UN. The victims of the Europeans that conquered the new world to conquer, commerce and convert committed atrocities of the kind that are today referred to as ‘genocide’ and crimes against humanity’ and ‘war crimes’ but these happened in far worse scale than that which media currently projects using the same terms.

What the Pope, the Church, the Catholics and members of the other Abrahamic religions should realize is that the non-Abrahamic religions lost out on entire indigenous races, religions and territory because of the policies adopted by the Church and its rulers.

This imperial domination has not ceased and men, movements and money (links to Western Governments, NGO lobbies, secret intelligence agencies) continue to be allocated to harvest souls. Those that claim that non-Abrahamic religions are exaggerating and pretending to raise unnecessary fears of Catholic-Christian-Islam expansionist movements may like to explain what happened to the once Buddhist Maldives, the once Buddhist Bangladesh, the once majority Buddhist South Korea where a 90% Buddhist population in the 1940s has within 65 years declined to 23% and is one of the Church’s success stories and where Pope Francis will leave for after Sri Lanka.

We would also like to have Pope Francis make a statement on certain elements within the Catholic Church collaborating with the LTTE

• links of some Church fathers in Sri Lanka to LTTE terror and launch an immediate investigation on their conduct to decide whether they deserved to be ex-communicated.
• Father Emmanuel is named by Sri Lankan Government as head of a banned LTTE front
• Father Rayappu Joseph allowed LTTE to use Madhu Church and declared open the Embassy of the Tamil Eelam”, the Eelam House in London.
• Fathers of the Church writing letters to the UNHRC repeatedly calling for war crimes inquiry against Sri Lanka

Francis Xavier to the Pope, the Church and Catholics in Sri Lanka will be hailed as a Saint but to the rest of the Sri Lankans he would be remembered for the conversion drive started in 1543, the punishment he ordered from Portugal against Sankili of Jaffna and the mass conversions that took place from 1619 onwards. Fernao de Queiros, the Portuguese chronicler had written that the people of Jaffna had been reduced to the utmost misery” under Portuguese rule. When the Dutch arrived, the converted Hindus returned to Hinduism while some became Christian while the coastal Paravas remained Catholic.

Many others have been made Saints despite dubious past. Giving sainthood is a right of the Pope and the Church, however, being asked to deliver an apology is not too much to ask and it is well within our rights as descendants of those who suffered and apology and reparation is a legal entitlement that Pope Francis should seriously consider before arriving to Sri Lanka.

Given that apologies have been made it is now time for the Church to apologize to India and Sri Lanka. An apology is nothing compared to the atrocities that was committed in the name of religion on the orders of the Church and King.

An apology from the Pope/Church will serve justice the Sinhalse Buddhists, the Hindu Tamils and the Muslims. That is virtually 98% of Sri Lanka!

It will be nice to see the Pope projected as amicable and understanding look at the request from a victim’s point of view.