Word: lanka
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...undertook the journey mostly during lulls in fighting. "We came, we worshipped, we left - that was it, we never wanted to stay back," says Lesley Fernando, who is Sinhalese and was brave enough to visit the shrine during the fragile truces in the war. (About 7% of Sri Lanka's population is Catholic, with adherents among both of the nation's major ethnicities: the Sinhalese, who are otherwise mostly Buddhist, and the Tamils, who are predominantly Hindu.) But never have pilgrims been seen in such numbers as they were last week. Numbering some 500,000, they still...
...voice coming through the public-address system was familiar yet strange. I had not heard it in at least 27 years, not since I had traveled to the sacred Madhu Shrine in northern Sri Lanka in August 1982 when I was a child and on pilgrimage with my family: "Aandavane" ("Oh, Holy Lord" in Tamil), "Aandavane." The words spread through the church compound where half a million others had made the same journey to see Madhu Matha, the Mother of Madhu, in her sacred precincts...
...predominantly Sinhalese government and the separatist Tamil Tigers. It was not until April 2008 that the military gained full control of the shrine; the Tigers, who demanded a separate state for ethnic Tamils on the island nation, were finally crushed in May 2009. (See pictures from inside Sri Lanka's rebel-held territory...
...ruined statue of Jesus Christ, destroyed by something that hit the building. Worshippers have tied coins to the statue as part of their vows. You can see the sides of its pedestal pockmarked with shrapnel. (See pictures of a deadly attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team in Pakistan...
...more about Sri Lanka...