"Pope Francis was visibly moved as he met the refugees who fled a military crackdown in Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh," NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Francis, on a visit to the Southeast Asian country, was advised against talking specifically about the persecuted Muslim minority for fear of causing a backlash against Myanmar's Christians.
Francis, on a visit to Yangon before traveling to Bangladesh later this week, hasn't said whether he will address the crisis described by the United Nations as "a textbook case of ethnic cleansing."
That's the dilemma for health workers in Bangladesh as they try to treat the physical and mental health issues among the Rohingya who've fled violence in their homeland of Myanmar.
The violence includes "some of the most awful crimes we have ever seen," including beheadings and cutting children's throats, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein tells NPR.
Bangladesh is struggling to accommodate 500,000-plus Rohingya who have poured across the border in less than two months. It isn't recognizing them as refugees and would prefer to see them repatriated.