Pope to the Roma: the Church is your home, no one will keep you out

(ANSA) - KOSICE, 14 SEPTEMBER - "No one in the Church should feel out of place or put aside". Pope Francesc said this in his meeting with the Roma community in Kosice. "Yes, the Church is home, it is your home. Therefore - I would like to tell you with my heart - you are welcome, always feel at home in the Church and never be afraid to live there. Nobody keeps you or anyone else out of the Church!", Added the Pontiff, after the memory, by a witness, of what Paul VI said in the meeting with the nomads in Pomezia, on 26 September 1965: "You in the Church are not on the margins ... You are in the heart of the Church".

    "Dear brothers and sisters, too many times you have been the object of preconceptions and merciless judgments, of discriminatory stereotypes, of defamatory words and gestures. With this we have all become poorer, poor in humanity. What is needed to recover dignity is to pass from prejudice to dialogue, from closures to integration, "he added. "Judicial prejudices only increase distances - he said -. Contrasts strong words do not help. Ghettoizing people does not resolve anything. When the closure is fueled, sooner or later anger flares up. The way to a peaceful coexistence is integration".

   (HANDLE).