ROME — Pope Francis received a special plea this month in the Vatican from Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar, the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation where the pope will make his 21st, and perhaps most politically perilous, foreign trip beginning Monday.

Don’t say “Rohingya.”

“It is a very contested term, and the military and government and the public would not like him to express it,” Cardinal Bo said in an interview during which he himself avoided using the word, referring only to Muslims who are suffering in Rakhine State.

He said he had urged the pope to focus on the woes of the Muslim minority in “a way that doesn’t hurt anybody” and suggested that using the word they call themselves could set back the pursuit of peace.

The Rohingya are persecuted and stateless Muslims in western Myanmar who are — according to the United Nations, the United States and much of the global community — the victims of ethnic cleansing, mass murder and systematic rape at the hands of the Myanmar military and extremist monks.