Pope Francis will be stepping carefully through a political minefield as he visits Myanmar from Nov. 27-30. This majority-Buddhist state with 52 million inhabitants is on an uphill road to full democracy because the military, which ruled for 60 years, still holds the balance of power.
Myanmar's two-year old democratically elected government led by Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, has drawn worldwide criticism in recent months because of the persecution of the Rohingya, a minority Muslim population, by the military. Approximately 620,000 Rohingya have left Myanmar's Rakhine state to seek refuge in neighboring Bangladesh.
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