A Statute for the caravan” “

“Granting gipsies a recognized personal Statute, eliminating the cases of statelessness and issuing them with identity papers that are non derogatory but identical to those of other citizens”: that’s one of the requests contained in the final document of the 5th World Congress of the pastoral care of gipsies on “Church and gipsies, towards ‘a spirituality of communion'”, held in Budapest from 30 June to 7 July. Promoted by the Pontifical Council for the pastoral care of migrants and people on the move, in collaboration with the Bishops’ Conference of Hungary, the meeting was attended by 203 delegates from 26 countries. A group of gipsy priests, religious and laity was present for the first time. There are some 9 million gipsies in Europe, and of these 6-7 million live in the countries of Eastern Europe. Some 4 million are children and adolescents of school age; half of them have never attended school: hence the appeal of the Church that “education for everyone” be guaranteed. Msgr. Agostino Marchetto , secretary for the Pontifical Council for migrants, has announced a document of the Holy See on the pastoral care of gipsies. Below we give a brief résumé of the main ideas and proposals. (cf. SirEurope 43 and 47/2003). Real integration. A distinction needs to be drawn between “assimilation” and “integration”, explained Bishop Leo Cornelio of Khandwa (India). In his view, “programmes aimed at assimilation start out from an implicit premise, namely that the lifestyle of the minority in question is not only different, but deviant and even wrong, and for that reason needs to be corrected and changed. That is an ‘irritating’ approach. Programmes aimed at integration, by contrast, are based on the idea that the minority should be inserted in common social structures, without abandoning their own identity”. In the final document it is pointed out, among other things, that “the housing conditions of gipsies should constitute one of the priority objectives on which the efforts of governments should be focused”. Moreover an appeal is made “to the competent authorities to treat the caravan (or mobile home) on a par with sedentary domicile”. Education and vocational training. Investing in the education and vocational training of gipsies is another priority. The problems of schools and educational projects in the intercultural society of Eastern Europe were discussed by Msgr. Szilárd Keresztes, Greek Catholic bishop of Hajdùdorog (Hungary). He stressed how important it was for “the teachers to win the trust of parents and have an intimate knowledge of the life of their students”. The “role of the nursery school is also irreplaceable”, so too is the need to “motivate families on the duty, but also the advantage, of sending their children to school”. Not all gipsies, however, want to settle down: respect for their way of life could require that other methods of education be provided (TV, video, itinerant teachers). It is important, too, that the field of education be extended to music and art. In the mass media the gipsy question is tackled with stereotyped “generalizations” and “deep-rooted prejudices”: “In this way citizens – says the final document –, perhaps without any personal experience, receive an image of gipsies that reinforces the prejudice about them that already exists”. Among gipsies newspapers are little diffused, but they are fond of television and radio programmes. That’s why one proposal is to dedicate a special slot for gipsies in the programmes of Vatican Radio and create a gipsy website for “Catholic pastoral care”. The congress also expressed the hope that a list of sites dedicated to gipsies be established. Pastoral care. The proposals include the need to promote greater collaboration between local parishes and gipsy chaplains; the translation of the Bible into the various gipsy languages; the creation of mobile pastoral groups, with the use of the various media (video, film, cd, music cassettes…); but above all the need to adapt the liturgy, preaching and catechesis “to the mentality, customs and traditions [of the gipsies], and to the needs of folk religion and pilgrimage”. The Congress does not exclude the creation of special structures of pastoral direction with the corresponding jurisdictional power, without prejudice to that of the local ordinaries.