Pope Francis meets World Pilgrimage of Gypsies

Vatican City – Roma people should be guaranteed adequate schooling and living standards, but they should also live honestly and give people no excuse to harbour prejudices against them, Pope Francis said on Monday.

Relatives of the Carrickmines fire victims are due to join hundreds of Irish travellers at an audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican later.

Pope Francis condemned discrimination against Gypsies and Travellers and the bad conditions a few live in.

The Pope addressed thousands of Romani in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, saying the nomadic ethnic group should “turn the page” and begin to build bridges of “peaceful co-habitation” with other peoples and cultures.

He called for dialogue and the integration of itinerant people into society, strongly affirming their rights.

“Your children have the right to go to school, do not stop them from doing so!” he urged, calling children the “most precious treasure”.

In a letter to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, Pope Francis said that until a new apostolic constitution outlining the complete reorganization is prepared, St. John Paul II’s 1988 document on the Curia remains in force as does the “General Regulation of the Roman Curia”.

“We no longer want to see family tragedies where children die of cold or in fires”, he said.

But he also said Christian gypsies had to do their part, “avoiding everything that is not worthy of this name: falsehood, fraud, swindles, fighting”. During the Spanish Civil War he was arrested together with a priest by Republican forces, who executed him August. 8, 1936.

The pro-Roma group Associazione 21 Luglio said it hoped the audience with the pope would “be the necessary stimulus to get Rome’s authorities to stop once and for all with their policy of exclusion and discrimination against Roma”.