Pope Francis visits impoverished Roma minority in Slovakia

Rome Newsroom, Sep 14, 2021 / 09:30 am (CNA). Pope Francis on Tuesday visited a ghetto in Slovakia to speak to the country’s marginalized and impoverished Roma minority.during the Sept. 14 meeting, he told the Roma people, also known as Romani, that the Catholic Church is their home and they should never “worry about whether you will be at home there.”“nobody ought ever keep you or anyone else away from the Church,” the pope emphasized, as he addressed Roma from throughout Slovakia.the gathering took place in the Lunik IX district in the Slovak city of Košice, where an estimated 7,500 Roma people live in buildings built to hold 2,500.Housing is in a state of degradation, with no working gas, electricity, or other services. The community is nearly all unemployed and the close living quarters have led to the spread of disease and other health problems.people wait for Pope Francis to arrive in the Lunik IX district of Košice, Slovakia on Sept. 14, 2021. Andrea Gagliarducci/cnaduring the encounter with Pope Francis, the Roma from Lunik IX were required to stay inside the buildings, which police had roped off. About 300 Roma from other parts of Slovakia and other visitors were in seats facing the platform from which the pope spoke, according to information learned by journalists present at the event.roma first arrived in the district of Lunik IX in 1979, after their village next to a landfill was destroyed. By the mid-1980s, Roma made up half the population of the neighborhood, which they now entirely occupy.salesian priests and sisters moved into the area in 2008 to serve the poor ethnic minority, which has been the subject of prejudice for centuries.pope Francis arrived at the Sept. 14 visit to lively music, dancing, applause, and cheers. In his address,