A self-critical admission of prejudice towards gipsies and a commitment to consider them “the heart of the Church” through “sound pastoral creativity” at the service of evangelization: that, in essence, is the intention behind the recent document put out by the Spanish Episcopal Conference entitled “The Church of Spain and the gipsies”, drawn up to mark the 5th anniversary of the beatification of the Spanish gipsy Ceferino Giménez Malla (El Pelé). There are some 600,000 gipsies in Spain. They live for the most part on the outskirts of the big cities, often in conditions of poverty and squalor. But in recent years there are signs of change: the level of literacy has been raised; many have been integrated into society and have regular jobs. “We are fully convinced that the future will be better than the present”, write the Spanish bishops, recalling the values of the gitano people, such as the paramount importance of the family, respect for the elderly, a more human conception of work, hospitality and solidarity between members of the same ethnic group, honour for the dead. The bishops recognize gipsies as “real subjects of evangelization” in their own communities. Some pastoral suggestions are made to this end, including the invitation to parishes to make “a greater effort to accept gipsies and love them for what they are”.
