As the crowds trickled out of the Yangon sports ground where Pope Francisdelivered his first public mass before tens of thousands of people, Khin Maung Myint, a Rohingya activist, sat on the sidelines. He was disappointed. Not in Francis, but in the advisers who appear to have dissuaded the pontiff from bringing up the plight of the Rohingya people.

“Rohingya are not the ones who lost their dignity, but the people who silence the pope’s expression,” he said. “Those who pushed the pope not to use the word Rohingya, they are the ones who lost their dignity.”

Francis is nearing the end of a four-day visit to Myanmar, previously known as Burma, in which he has not publicly spoken about the persecuted Muslim minority, more than 620,000 of whom have fled to Bangladesh in recent months, escaping what western leaders are calling ethnic cleansing.

Among the guests in the VIP section, where a gazebo provided protection from the hot Myanmar sun, was Aye Ne Win, the grandson of the country’s first dictator who attracted public derision recently after he dressed up as the pope for Halloween. Beside him, in a black veil, sat a beauty queen who has described the Rohingya in a YouTube video as “harbingers of terror and violence”.

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