Pope Francis apologises to gypsy community for discrimination

The pontiff also paid homage to Romanian Catholics persecuted during communist rule as he wrapped up the third and final day of his visit to the country with a message of forgiveness.

Francis reached out to the minorities of Transylvania during the deeply symbolic visit about 20 years after St John Paul II made the first papal trip to the majority Orthodox country.

In his final stop before heading back to the Vatican, Francis visited a community of Roma, also known as Gypsies, in a newly built Catholic church that was so small organisers asked the clergy to leave to make more room for Gypsy families to get in.

There, Francis apologised for the “many experiences of discrimination, segregation and mistreatment experienced by your communities”, a reference to the second-class status of the Roma minority in Romania and throughout Europe, where Roma are more likely to be poor, uneducated and at risk of harassment, according to European Union studies.

Francis recently met members of Roma communities in the diaspora at the Vatican and knows well the hardships they face.

“History tells us that Christians too, including Catholics, are not strangers to such evil,” Francis said, in an apparent reference to World War Two-era deportation of Roma along with Romanian Jews that is commemorated by a Holocaust memorial in Bucharest.

“I would like to ask your forgiveness for this,” Francis said. “I ask forgiveness – in the name…