Pope Francis will visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu in Mannar during his upcoming trip to the the island of Sri Lanka, the Vatican Insider reports.
Earlier this year, the Tamil civil society groups, called on the Pope to visit the Tamil areas in the North and East, in order to view the ongoing plight of the Tamil people.
“We are confident that Your Holiness will appreciate, following your visit to Sri Lanka, that Sri Lanka is not merely lacking in ‘reconciliation’ but that the problem is far worse than that - as we have tried to describe above, the problem is one of consolidating an ethnocratic state. Your Holiness will no doubt recall that it is this ethnocratic project that led the Tamil people to take up arms against the Sri Lankan state," the Tamil Civil Society Forum wrote in a letter to Pope Francis. See here.
Commenting on the proposed visit, Father Emmanuel, who is also the President of Global Tamil Forum (GTF) told the Vatican Insider:
"The Church in Sri Lanka embraces the two components of the population, the Sinhalese and the Tamil. But despite its unity in one Bishops’ Conference, it remains divided by the experiences of war."
"We wish for Pope Francis’ visit to represent a turning point for the Church, moving towards a more courageous and prophetic approach," he added.