Pope Francis gave Sri Lanka its first saint at a waterfront Mass for more half a million people in Colombo yesterday, calling 17th century missionary Joseph Vaz a model of reconciliation after the country's recent civil war.
The pope, who on Tuesday was tired after starting his trip under a blazing sun, looked relaxed against a sparkling backdrop of rolling waves as he told the hushed crowd that Vaz was an example of religious tolerance relevant to Sri Lanka today.
"Saint Joseph shows us the importance of transcending religious divisions in the service of peace," he said in his homily, delivered to a nation recovering from a long war between mainly Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils. Vaz, who was captured as a suspected spy after he crept into the tropical island in disguise, was born in 1651 in India's Goa, then a Portuguese colony.
He travelled south at the age of 36, dressed as a beggar, to a country then divided into kingdoms and European colonies after hearing about the persecution of Catholics by the Dutch. He worked for years under the protection of a Buddhist king and almost single-handedly re-established Catholicism in Sri Lanka, where he died in 1711.
On Monday, Francis called on the Buddhist-majority country to uncover the truth about its bloody civil war that ended in 2009 with the army's crushing defeat of Tamil rebels and the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. Francis' visit, the first by a pope in 20 years, has added to the sense that a new chapter is opening on the island, which voted the wartime leadership out of power last week.
Francis, speaking slowly in English, said Christians should follow the example of Vaz to build peace, justice and reconciliation. Catholics make up about 7 per cent of Sri Lanka's 20 million population, while 10 times as many people follow Buddhism.
The canonisation is an example of Francis's no-nonsense approach to creating saints to meet the demands of the flock for new holy figures, particular in parts of the world where the Church is still growing. He bent rules and dispensed with a regulation that normally requires a second miracle to be attributed to a candidate for sainthood.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Pope names Sri Lanka's first saint
