The Gypsy Pilgrims

 Pope’s discourse to the Gypsy pilgrims

“You are in the Church not on the margins, but in certain aspects you are at the centre, you are in the heart of the Church” said Pope Benedict XVI, meeting the 2000 odd gypsy pilgrims from all over Europe gathered Saturday in the Vatican Paul VI audience hall. He was quoting the words of his predecessor Pope Paul VI pronounced in 1965. Earlier Archbishop Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Vatican Pontifical Council for the pastoral care of Migrants and itinerant peoples had welcomed the gypsy pilgrims and thanked all those Church groups that had made this event possible. . The Pope in his discourse recalled all the travails endured by the gypsies in particular under the Nazis. Present among the pilgrims was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. May you in future never more be subjected to such outrages, the Pope fervently wished. You seem to be without any fatherland, and thus precisely the entire European continent is your home. And the Pope invited them to write a new chapter of their own history and that of Europe. The gypsy family has to be integrated into the context of the Eureopean family, sharing equal rights and duties. The Pope held up for their imitation the faith and love for the Church of the gypsy Christian martyr, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth and 75^th of the martyrdom, of Blessed Ceferino Gimenez, of Spanish origin, Bl. Gimenez lived from 1861 to 1936 and was beatified by Bl. Pope John Paul II in 1997. The Pope invited them to contribute their share to the evangelising work of the Church and he warned them against certain sects that would try to wean them away from the Church. Four gypsies addressed the Pope and gypsy performances enlivened the meeting

Pope receives Gypsies at Vatican
Pope Benedict XVI listened to Gypsies recount their way of life at a first-ever papal audience for them at the Vatican on Saturday, decried their persecution by the Nazis during World War II and called on Europe to help end centuries of rejection for the Roma people.
About 2,000 Catholic Gypsies gathered in the Vatican's auditorium to hear Benedict speak.
"Your history is complex, and, in some periods, painful," Benedict said. "You are a people who over the past centuries never held nationalistic ideologies, never aspired to possess a land or dominate other peoples. You have remained without a homeland and have ideally considered the entire (European) continent as your home."