Cardinal Bo has special influence among Asian cardinals

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis issued regular appeals for prayers for Myanmar — a nation embroiled in a political and humanitarian crisis since a military coup plunged the crisis into civil war in February 2021 — and the cardinal leading the country’s approximately 700,000 Catholics often is mentioned as a possible successor to the pope.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, who has served as archbishop of Yangon since 2003, was created Myanmar’s first cardinal by Pope Francis in 2015 during the second consistory of his pontificate.

Throughout Myanmar’s civil war, the cardinal has worked to position the Catholic Church as a platform for dialogue and negotiation between warring factions. He has stressed the church’s role as a voice “for the voiceless” affected by the conflict, underscoring how Pope Francis’ 2017 trip to Myanmar elevated the church’s visibility as a peacemaker in the country.

During that landmark trip — the first ever by a pope — Pope Francis met with Aung San Suu Kyi, then Myanmar’s state counselor and de facto leader, as well as General Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 military coup and later appointed himself prime minister in 2024.

Born in 1948 to a family of 10 children, Cardinal Bo was educated by the Salesians and was ordained a priest in the order in 1976. His early ministry took him to some of Myanmar’s most remote regions as a parish priest. In 1985, he was appointed apostolic administrator of Lashio, and when it was elevated to a diocese in 1990, he became its first bishop.

St. John Paul II appointed him bishop of Pathein in 1996 and then archbishop of Yangon — Myanmar’s largest city — seven years later. In 2001, the pope had named then-Bishop Bo a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (now a dicastery). Myanmar is about 90 percent Buddhist, 6 percent Christian and 2 percent Muslim.

The cardinal was president of Myanmar’s bishops’ conference from 2000-2006 and was reelected in 2020. From 2018-2024 he was president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, working closely with cardinals and bishops throughout the region.

Cardinal Bo has supported Pope Francis’ push for a more synodal church, participating in the Synod of Bishops on synodality as president of the Asian bishops’ federation and advocating for increased implementation of synods on the diocesan level and an increased efforts to incorporate the voice of the poor into the church’s decision-making.

He has been outspoken on the issue of climate change, stating that “global warming has devastated communities and the livelihoods of millions, threatening to slip away from the next generation” and drawing attention to the exploitation of resources of Indigenous Asian communities.

The cardinal is a proponent of active nonviolence and is an adviser to the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence, founded by Pax Christi International. At the institute’s inauguration in Rome in 2024, he called for a “profound shift from a paradigm of war and violence to one of peace and nonviolence.”

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