A girl lights candles at Botahtaung Pagoda during the celebrations to mark the Thadingyut festival in Yangon on Oct 9. (Photo: AFP)
By UCA News reporter
Oct 11 2022
Military bombs Buddhist monastery in Karen state, civilians killed in Sagaing region.
Catholics in Myanmar prayed for peace and for those who lost their lives in conflicts as people across the Buddhist-majority nation marked Thadingyut, the festival of lights.
Buddhists celebrated the three-day festival from Oct 8-10 when thousands visited pagodas to pray and offer flowers, lit candles, and released colorful paper lanterns.
The festival falls on the full moon of the seventh month of the Burmese calendar and commemorates Buddha’s descent to earth from heaven after three months of educating his mother and other heavenly gods, according to traditional Buddhist belief. It also marks the completion of the Buddhist month of fasting.
Meanwhile, Independent Catholics for Justice in Myanmar, a group of clergy, religious, and laypeople at home and abroad, organized prayers for peace and for those who died in their pursuit of democracy in Myanmar.
“At this time of the festival, we pray that civilians in the country have a peaceful and secure life and are not subject to unjust acts of arbitrary arrests, torture, jailing, destroying homes and properties and killings by the junta,” the group said in a statement.
During Sunday Mass on Oct 9, Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon decried a “new dark age across the world” where people are battling multifaceted wars — dictatorship versus democracy, truth versus lies, light versus darkness, and those who fight for freedom versus dictators.
“I am concerned that more fighting will break out and more people will suffer”
“In our country, thousands of people are suffering from the crisis of political, economic, and humanitarian while churches and monasteries have been bombed, villages have been burned and the people are killed,” Cardinal Bo said in his homily.
He urged Catholics to be like Easter people who do not lose hope as the journey to Calvary is yet to end.
“I pray to God to bring peace immediately to my country as I am concerned that more fighting will break out and more people will suffer,” one Catholic who did not wish to be named said after the Mass.
The prayers came as Myanmar continues to witness armed resistance against the military junta, which has unleashed air strikes against and shelled civilians that saw thousands of people flee their homes and seek refuge in nearby jungles or in churches and monasteries.
Military offensives have destroyed villages and killed hundreds of civilians. Churches, Church-run facilities, and Christian villages have been attacked and badly damaged.
A Buddhist monastery was bombed in a village in Karen state which borders Thailand while several civilians in Sagaing region were killed as a result of air strikes at the weekend.
The number of casualties was not disclosed.
Dr. Sasa, an ethnic Chin Christian and spokesperson of the exiled National Unity Government (NUG), said that Thadingyut is the day “to express the light of love to our people, the light of love to each other, and the light of love to our beloved country of Myanmar.”
“May next year’s Thadingyut festival be a festival of peace, a festival of freedom, and a festival of prosperity,” he said.
More than 2,300 people, including scores of children, have been killed and over 15,700 people have been detained by the junta since the military coup in February last year, rights groups say. – UCA News
