Rome Seeks to Appease in Bangladesh

“The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue looks forward to sending a delegation to Bangladesh, to meet with Muslim students and engage in dialogue with them about their spiritual journey.” The words, deliberately chosen by Archbishop Kevin Randall, sound like a mine-sweeping operation.

As reported by Ucanews, the Apostolic Nuncio to Bangladesh was received on September 9, 2024, at the State Guest House Jamuna, the country's new center of power and now the official residence of the interim Prime Minister, Muhammad Yunus. On the agenda for discussion: the protection of the country's religious minorities.

The Nuncio proposed the creation of a forum for interreligious dialogue between the Vatican and Muslim academics. He then stressed the need to increase humanitarian aid to the more than one million Rohingya refugees living in the Cox's Bazar camps.

A proposal that comes as religious minorities—particularly Hindus—are facing a series of attacks following the bloody student-led protests that ousted the “Iron Lady” Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party from power on August 5.

It has to be said that the Catholic minority doesn't carry much weight: 0.3% out of 160 million Bangladeshis. And since the fall of Sheikh Hasina, their future looks difficult: as this site reported at the beginning of September, the Archbishop of Dhaka, Archbishop Bejoy N. D'Cruze, had to make the painful decision to close the Church-operated schools in the capital and its region.

These were the increasingly frequent target of attacks from the Student Democratic Force, a rather left-wing political formation, which accuses some Catholics of having compromised themselves with the deposed regime.

“Although the official religion of Bangladesh is Islam, the secular nature of the Constitution protects freedom of religion. But it seems that many people don't have a clear idea of what an official religion is,” Archbishop Randall explains to Ucanews.

In his view, the Holy See's aim in talking to Islam is to “remind people that we are dealing with secular country”, in the sense that the practice of other religions, such as Catholicism, is not excluded. A challenge, given that, in the past, “religious minorities have often been instrumentalized for political ends in the Indian subcontinent”, the Nuncio recalls.

The interim Prime Minister—who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for promoting the development of microcredit in Bangladesh—assured the prelate that the main objective of the interim government would be to improve security following last month's demonstrations and to implement major reform programs.

The next few weeks are therefore likely to be crucial for the future of the Church and its mission in the country. One—perhaps encouraging—sign has come from the United States: on September 15, 2024, the US Agency for International Development, USAID, signed an agreement to provide Bangladesh with just over $200 million in aid. This investment is probably conditional on the pacification of the capital and the country's major cities.

It's possible to understand the Church's survival maneuvers in this currently turbulent Muslim country, but one can also grasp that ideas are no longer very clear in Catholic heads today on the question of the place of the Catholic religion in general in States. But this is unfortunately nothing new since Vatican II.