Pope Francis' appeal for Roma: "They are our brothers"

Papa Francesco is back to do appeal for Roma, after the recent trip to Slovakia, underlining that “they belong to our brothers and we must welcome them”.

“I am thinking of the Roma community and those who commit themselves to them for a journey of fraternity and inclusion,” Bergoglio said at the general audience. “It was moving to share the feast of the Roma community: a simple feast that smacked of the Gospel. The Roma are our brothers and we must welcome them, be close as the Salesians do there in Bratislava ”.

The Pope also called the applause for the sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta who help the poor a Bratislava. “I am thinking of the Missionary Sisters of Charity of the Bethlehem Center in Bratislava, which welcomes homeless people,” he said.

"Good nuns who receive the discarded of society, pray and serve, pray and help, pray a lot and help a lot without pretensions, they are the heroes of this civilization, I would like us all to thank Mother Teresa and these sisters, all together for these nuns, brave! ”.

The Pope also said that in Europe “the presence of God is watered down, we see it every day, in consumerism and in the 'vapors' of a single thought, a strange but real thing, the result of a mixture of old and new ideologies. And this distances us from familiarity with God. Even in this context, the answer that heals comes from prayer, from witness, from humble love, humble love that serves, the Christian is to serve ”.

Pope Francis said this in the general audience retracing his recent apostolic journey to Budapest and Slovakia. “This is what I saw in the encounter with the holy people of God: a faithful people, which suffered from atheistic persecution. I also saw it in the faces of our Jewish brothers and sisters, with whom we remembered the Shoah. Because there is no prayer without memory ”.