In 2011, on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Blessed Ceferino Gimenez Malla, a Gypsy (a member of the oldest travelling band-societies in the world, also known as Rom or Sinti people) who was shot in 1936 after defending a priest during the Spanish Civil War, Pope Benedict XVI (the head of the worldwide Catholic church) prayed that the world's Gypsies no longer be subjected to prejudice, oppression and rejection.
Pope Benedict recalled the painful past of the Gypsies, especially when hundreds of thousands of men, women and children "were barbarically killed in extermination camps" during World War II. He acknowledged that even today, many Gypsy communities and individuals still face "serious and worrying problems, such as often-difficult relations with the societies in which they live."
The pope also asked the Gypsy communities to do their part and respect local laws and be good citizens. He called on Europe and Gypsies to collaborate more closely and "write a new page of history together." Governments need to do more to help Gypsies integrate into society, he said.
One of the Gypsies, Ceija Stojka of Austria, told the pope she was confined to three Nazi concentration camps when she was 9 years old. Of 200 people in her family, only six survived the war and the Holocaust, she said. Anti-Gypsy threats, policies and actions "worry me greatly and make me very sad," she said.
Carlo Mikic, an 18-year-old Roma from Italy, said he understood many people's prejudices against Gypsies are rooted in the instances of crime by some members of their community, but that it was wrong to place the blame on a whole ethnicity or people for the wrongdoings of an individual. He said he dreamed of a future in which Gypsies would be treated like full citizens and that they would no longer be a people "to be isolated or feared."
By Carol Glatz, from Catholic News Services
