Pope Francis apologizes to Roma for discrimination, stresses need for unity during Romania visit

Pope Francis has asked the Roma community for forgiveness, in the name of the Church, for the injustice perpetrated against it. He made the apology, alongside a call for social inclusion, during a meeting with representatives of the Roma community in Blaj, the last stop of his three-day visit in Romania.

The Pope was in the Barbu Lăutaru district of Blaj, where the majority of residents are Roma. He asked for forgiveness for “all those times in history when we have discriminated, mistreated or looked askance at you, with the look of Cain rather than that of Abel, and were unable to acknowledge you, to value you and to defend you in your uniqueness,” he said, quoted by Vaticannews.va.

The Pope was in Blaj on June 2 to beatify seven Greek- Catholic bishops who died under the communist regime. The bishops - Iuliu Hossu, Vasile Aftenie, Ioan Balan, Valeriu Traian Frentiu, Ioan Suciu, Tito Liviu Chinezu, and Alexandru Rusu - were arrested and imprisoned beginning with 1948.

Speaking about them, the Pope said that “with great courage and interior fortitude, they accepted harsh imprisonment and every kind of mistreatment, in order not to deny their fidelity to their beloved Church.” He went on to say that they handed down to the Romanians a “precious legacy that we can sum up in two words: freedom and mercy”: the freedom to live a “diversity of religious expressions.”

The Pope also referred to the experience of Romanians under the communist rule. “These lands know well how greatly people suffer when an ideology or a regime takes over, setting itself up as a rule for the very life and faith of people, diminishing and even eliminating their ability to make decisions, their freedom and their room for creativity,” he said during the liturgy to beatify the seven bishops.

The Pope started his visit in Romania in Bucharest, on May 31, where he delivered a message stressing the need for cooperation.

“To move forward together, as a way of shaping the future, requires a noble willingness to sacrifice something of one’s own vision or best interest for the sake of a greater project, and thus to create a harmony that makes it possible to advance securely towards shared goals. This is the path to the building of an inclusive society, one in which everyone shares his or her own gifts and abilities, through quality education and creative, participatory and mutually supportive labor,” he said.

The Pope also referred to the country’s emigration issue and spoke of the Romanians living abroad, who “by their culture, their distinctive identity and their industriousness, have enriched those countries to which they have emigrated, and by the fruit of their hard work have helped their families who have remained at home.”