“It’s true I didn’t have the pleasure of slamming the door in their face publicly with a denunciation,” the pope said. “But I had the satisfaction of dialogue, and letting the other side dialogue, and in this way the message arrived.”

He argued that his caution granted him access to private meetings, where he could be more frank.

Of his meeting with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who has led a campaign of mass murder, rape and arson against the Rohingya, the pope said that “I did not negotiate with the truth” during the conversation and that he made the general understand that the horrors of the past were no longer viable.

The general had demanded to meet with Pope Francis before the pontiff saw Myanmar’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose reputation has suffered for her failure to forcefully condemn the killings. (The pope suggested she be cut some slack, saying, “In Myanmar, it’s difficult to evaluate a criticism without asking, ‘Is it possible to have done this?’”)

When a reporter asked the pope if he worried he had been used as a political pawn by the general to show the country who was boss, the pope said, “The intention of that I do not know, but I was interested in dialogue.” Pressed if he had used the word “Rohingya” in the private meeting, he responded that once he made sure the general understood his message, “I dared say everything I wanted to say.”

All of that diplomatic work, the pope suggested, was done to encourage Myanmar, a country “at the tipping point,” to push ahead toward democracy. And he likewise suggested that his silence on the Rohingya paid off with the trip’s culminating meeting with the refugees in Dhaka on Friday.

He pointed out that TG1, an Italian news program, dedicated a long segment to the meeting. “You saw today the front pages of the papers. All of them have received the message. And I have not heard any criticism. Maybe there is, but I haven’t heard it.”

The old Francis charm, he seemed to be saying, was back in action.

At different points of the trip, humanitarian activists had wondered where his special touch had gone. They expressed disappointment that Pope Francis, admired for speaking out for the downtrodden, had gone quiet for fear of endangering his own flock in Myanmar. Some analysts questioned how it affected his moral authority. Locals doubted his influence.