Walking with them

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the martyrdom of the Spanish Gispy Ceferino Giménez Malla, proclaimed Blessed by John Paul II on May 4, 1997, a large group of European Gipsies took part in the pilgrimage promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant people in Rome on June 11-12. The highlight of the event was the audience with the Holy Father on Saturday 11 attended by some 2000 Gipsies from various communities and ethnic groups, in the Paul VI Hall. The number of Gipsies in Europe (Roma and Sinti) is estimated to range from 10 to 12 million.A renewed approach. “The life of the pilgrims present here – said Msgr. Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrant and Itinerant People in his address to the Holy Father – is marked by many difficulties but the gift of these encounters conveys courage and revitalizes hopes”. However, “Gipsies in Europe are living a new season and the possibility of a more dignified life. We are experiencing a moment of change marked by the need for a renewed approach on the part of the Church and of society towards Gipsy populations, while at the same time it is also necessary that Gipsy identity is consolidated vis a vis contemporary challenges”. Four life testimonies . The speech by Msgr. Vegliò was followed by the Gipsies’ personal stories. Ceija Stojka, an Austrian Gipsy woman who survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps recalled: “In Austria, where I was born, my family was made up of over 200 people. Only six of us have survived the war and the extermination. When I was 9 me and my family were confined to Auschwitz concentration camps, and later to Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen. I was a child, and I saw other children dying, as well as old people, women and men. I lived among the dead and the almost dead in the camps”. “Today Auschwitz and the concentration camps have fallen asleep, and they should no longer wake up”, she claimed. Sister Atanazia Holubova, a Slovakian religious of the St. Basil order said she was born in a small village from a Gipsy family of believing, non-practising, Christians. “When I was an adolescent, during Slovakia’s Communist dictatorship, me and a group of young Christians held secret meetings with a priest and for the first time I experienced the joy and the community rooted in Christ. Nobody noticed that I was a Gipsy”.A painful past. “Your story is complex, and, in some periods painful”, underlined Benedict XVI, who recalled “the frequently difficult relations you have with the societies in which you live”. “Unfortunately down through the centuries you have tasted the bitterness of inhospitality and at times, persecution, as occurred during the Second World War: thousands of women, men and children were barbarously killed in extermination camps”. “As you say, it was the Porrájmos, the “Great Devouring”, a tragedy still little known and whose proportions are difficult to gauge”. “The European conscience – the Pope warned – cannot forget so much suffering! May your people never again be the object of harassment, rejection and contempt! On your part, always seek justice, legality, reconciliation and do your utmost never to be the cause of others’ suffering!” A new page of history. “Today, thanks be to God, the situation is changing: new opportunities are unfolding before you while you are acquiring new awareness. As time has passed you have created a culture with important expressions, such as the music and song which have enriched Europe. Many races are no longer nomadic, but seek stability with new expectations as they face life.’ The Church, continued His Holiness, “walks with you and invites you to live in accordance with the demanding requirements of the Gospel, trusting in the power of Christ, towards a better future”. “Even Europe, which is reducing its boundaries and considers the diversity of peoples and cultures a treasure, is offering you new possibilities”. “I ask you, dear friends”, was the Pope’s invitation, “to write together a new page of history for your people and for Europe! The search for housing and dignified work and education for your children are the foundations on which to build that integration of which you and the whole of society will benefit”. “You too offer your effective and loyal collaboration so that your families may fit into the civil fabric of Europe with dignity! Many of your children and your young people wish to be educated and to live with and like others. I see them with special affection, convinced that your children are entitled to a better life. May their good be your greatest aspiration! Preserve the dignity and value of your families, little domestic churches, so that they may be true schools of humanity”. The institutions, for their part, “should do all they can to offer this process adequate guidance”.