• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Pope calls out prejudice as he meets Roma in Slovakia

September 14, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 14, 2021

By Robert Muller

KOSICE, Slovakia (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Tuesday condemned prejudice and discrimination against Europe’s Roma people during a visit to one of the most impoverished communities in Slovakia, saying it was wrong to pigeonhole entire ethnic groups.

Francis, 84, arrived at the bleak Lunik IX settlement on the outskirts of Slovakia’s second biggest city, Kosice, on his penultimate day in the country.

“We cannot reduce the reality of others to fit our own pre-packaged ideas; people cannot be pigeonholed,” he said, overlooking the dilapidated concrete apartment blocs where about 4,300 people live next to the city garbage dump.

“All too often you have been the object of prejudice and harsh judgments, discriminatory stereotypes, defamatory words and gestures,” he said, after addresses from a Catholic priest who helps in the community and from several residents.

“As a result, we are all poorer in humanity,” he said.

There are around 440,000 Roma living in Slovakia, most of them in the eastern part of the country of 5.5 million.

The Roma, who migrated to Europe from India in the 10th century, have long faced persecution around the world, living on the fringes of society and struggling for work.

In Lunik’s squalid and dangerous living conditions, many residents burn whatever they can during the winter to stay warm because many buildings lack heating, making for poor air quality.

“He is bringing some joy to this place,” a Roma woman told reporters through a translator.

The jobless rate among Slovak Roma stands far above the national 7.7% level.

In April, Slovakia adopted a strategy to improve the Roma situation by 2030 with a focus on employment, education, healthcare and housing.

Addressing residents from an open stage covered by white cloth with flower designs painted by Roma children, the pope said that God saw people as equal. Some residents watched from balconies with peeling paint.

“Judgment and prejudice only increase distances. Hostility and sharp words are not helpful. Marginalizing others accomplishes nothing. Segregating ourselves and other people eventually leads to anger,” he said.

Father Marian Deahos, who works with Roma people in a nearby town, said stereotypes made integration and communication difficult.

“The biggest problem is that everybody thinks gypsies, Roma people, are inferior,” he told a reporter.

“Everybody thinks that they steal, that they don’t want to work. Everybody thinks they should stay in a ghetto like this and not be part of society among us,” he said.

In his address, the pope asked the Roma to go forward “step by step, with honest work, in the dignity of earning your daily bread.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the pope, presiding at a Byzantine religious, said the cross should not be used as a political symbol and warned against Christians trying to be triumphalist.

His last event on Tuesday was a rally with the city’s young people at a football stadium.

(Reporting by Robert Muller; editing by Philip Pullella and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Source Link Pope calls out prejudice as he meets Roma in Slovakia

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. YouTravel.Me packs up $1M to match travelers with curated small group adventures
  2. Welcome to TechRadar’s PC Gaming Week 2021
  3. Best Apple Watch: the ultimate guide to pick your iPhone compatible smartwatch
  4. Virgin Galactic looks to late September, early October for first commercial crewed flight

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • 24-Million-Year-Old Protein Fragments Are Oldest Ever Recovered, A Robot Listened To Spoken Instructions And Performed Surgery, And Much More This Week
  • DNA From Greenland Sled Dogs – Maybe The World’s Oldest Breed – Reveals 1,000 Years Of Arctic History
  • Why Doesn’t Moonrise Shift By The Same Amount Each Night?
  • Moa De-Extinction, Fashionable Chimps, And Robot Surgery – No Human Required
  • “Human”: Powerful New Images Mark The Most Scientifically Accurate “Hyper-Real 3D Models Of Human Species Ever”
  • Did We Accidentally Leave Life On The Moon In 2019 – And Could We Revive It?
  • 1.8 Million Years Ago, Two Extinct Humans Had One Of The Gnarliest Deaths In History
  • “Powerful Image” Of One Of The World’s Rarest Tigers Exposes The Real Danger In Taman Negara
  • Evolution, Domestication, And A Lot Of Very Good Boys: How Wolves Became Dogs
  • Why Do Orcas Have White Spots Near Their Eyes?
  • Tomb Of First King Of Ancient Maya City Discovered In Belize
  • The Real Reason The Tip Of Your Tape Measure Wiggles Like That
  • The “Haunting” Last Message From NASA’s Opportunity Rover, Sent From Inside A Planet-Wide Storm
  • Adorable Video Proves Not All Gorillas Hate The Rain. It Might Even Win One A Mate
  • 5,000-Year-Old Rock Art May Show One Of Ancient Egypt’s First Rulers
  • Alzheimer’s-Linked Protein Levels “20 Times Higher” In Newborn Babies – What Does This Mean?
  • Americans Were Asked If They Thought Civil War Was Coming. The Results Were Unexpected
  • Voyager 1 & 2 Could Be Detected From Almost A Light-Year Away With Our Current Technology
  • Dams Have Nudged Earth’s Poles By Over 1 Meter In The Past 200 Years
  • This Sugar Could Be A Cure For Male Pattern Baldness – And It’s Been In Our Bodies All Along
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version