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Pope Francis defends his Rohingya silence in Myanmar

10:46am EST - 01:49

Pope Francis on Saturday defended his strategy of avoiding the term ''Rohingya'' in Myanmar, saying he believed he got his message across to both the civilian and military leadership without shutting down dialogue. Scarlett Cvitanovich reports.

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Pope Francis has defended his strategy of avoiding the term 'Rohingya' in public in Myanmar. He urged respect for, quote, "each ethnic group and its identity" during a speech in the southeast Asia country last week but avoided a diplomatic backlash by not using the highly-charged word. He told reporters on board the papal plane on Saturday (December 2) he wanted to speak to both civilian and military leadership without shutting down dialogue. (SOUNDBITE) (Italian) POPE FRANCIS, SAYING: "I was interested in my message getting through. So I saw that in my speech if I had used that word the door would have slammed shut." Pope Francis' trip was so delicate local church officials had advised him not to say Rohingya because it could spark a backlash against Christians and other minority groups. Instead, he strongly hinted he had used the word in private meetings. The predominantly Buddhist country doesn't recognize the mostly Muslim Rohingya as an ethnic group with its own identity, but as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. A violent military crackdown in Myanmar has seen a mass exodus of more than 620-thousand Rohingya. Refugees say scores of their villages were burnt to the ground, people were killed and women raped, but the military denies accusations of ethnic cleansing. Pope Francis has defended the Rohingya by name twice from the Vatican earlier this year but waited until he had left Myanmar and arrived in Bangladesh before using the term for the first time in Asia on Friday (December 1). Francis ended his diplomatically tricky trip seeking the forgiveness of Rohingya refugees.

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Pope Francis defends his Rohingya silence in Myanmar

10:46am EST - 01:49