Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday called for "a new page" to be written
in the history of the Roma community in Europe after "painful" events in
the past, urging the nomads to integrate at an emotional Vatican
ceremony.
Addressing some 2,000 Roma representatives attending the audience, Benedict said Roma culture had "enriched" Europe.
"I invite you, dear friends, to write together a new page in the history of your people and of Europe," the pope said.
"Seeking
accommodation and dignified work and education for your children are
the basis on which to build integration," the 84-year-old head of the
Roman Catholic Church added.
"May your families have a dignified place in Europe's civil fabric!"
The pope's speech was preceded by Roma music and dances in an unprecedented show for the Vatican.
He
said the Roma community suffered from "grave and worrying problems,
like the often difficult relations with the societies in which you
live".
"You are a people who in past centuries have not had
nationalist ideologies, have not wanted to conquer land or dominate
other people," the pope said.
"Your history is complex and
sometimes painful. ... Through the centuries you have known the bitter
taste of a lack of hospitality and sometimes of persecution like in
World War II," he added.
"Europe's conscience cannot forget such
pain. May your people never again be the target of anger, rejection and
disdain," the German-born pope said.
He added that the suffering of the Roma during the war was "a drama that is still little acknowledged".
The
former Joseph Ratzinger was drafted into a German anti-aircraft corps
at the end of the war and was briefly held as a prisoner of war in 1945.
The
audience was a "historic event that was joyous, moving and peaceful",
said Marco Impagliazzo, head of the Sant'Egidio Catholic charity, which
is heavily involved in helping the Roma community.
"From the pain
of a history of suffering, a hope is born after this audience that the
Roma populations can live together with all the European people in peace
and security," he said.
A series of anti-Roma incidents have been
reported in Europe this year, including clashes with far-right militias
in Hungary and far-right marches in the Czech Republic.
Representatives
of the community also spoke at the audience, including Ceija Stojka, a
survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
"I was a child and I
saw children, old people, women and men die," the elderly woman said. I lived among the dead and the near-dead in the camps," she added.
Younger people also spoke of the difficulties of integration.
"I
would like my children and all the Roma and Sinti children to have a
future of serenity and peace ... without being excluded," said Pamela
Suffer, 28, a Sinti whose family has lived in Italy for centuries.
Carlo
Mikic, 18, who was born in Rome into a family from the former
Yugoslavia and lives in a nomad camp, said: "I am a Roma and a fully
European citizen."
"We Roma are thinking about the future. We dream of studying, working, living in a house and having papers," he said.
"We are not a people to be isolated and to be afraid of," he added.
The
event at the Vatican was to honour the 150th anniversary of the birth
of Ceferino Gimenez Malla, a Catholic Roma from Spain who was beatified
by late pope John Paul II in 1997, putting him on the path to sainthood.