VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ aim in visiting Myanmar and Bangladesh is to encourage their tiny Catholic communities and bring a message of friendship and peace to some of Asia’s most peripheral and poor. The big question looming is whether he’ll utter the word “Rohingya” while he’s there.

The “will he or won’t he?” issue has dominated debate before Francis’ trip, which begins Monday when his Alitalia charter flight lands in Yangon and ends with a youth rally in Dhaka on Saturday.

In between, Francis will meet separately with Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, its powerful military chief and Buddhist monks. He’ll greet a delegation of Rohingya Muslims and meet with Bangladesh’s political and religious leadership in Dhaka. Masses for the Catholic faithful and meetings with the local church hierarchy round out the itinerary in each country.

Myanmar’s local Catholic Church has publicly urged Francis to avoid using the term, which is shunned by many locally because the ethnic group is not a recognized minority in the country. Rohingya in recent months have been subject to what the United Nations says is a campaign of “textbook ethnic cleansing” by the military in poverty-wracked Rakhine state.

Francis, though, has already prayed for “our Rohingya brothers and sisters,” and any decision to avoid the term could be viewed as a capitulation to Myanmar’s military and a stain on his legacy of standing up for the marginalized of society.

“Being a religious leader — Catholic leader — means that he is well-regarded, but of course there is this worry if he says something, people might say, ‘OK, he just came to meddle,”’ said Burmese analyst Khin Zaw Win, a former political prisoner. “So, I think a lot of diplomacy is needed, in addition to the public relations.”