The Roma are Europe’s largest ethnic minority, and probably its most alienated. A Jesuit priest who has chosen to live among them finds little solidarity shown towards these outcasts of the Continent
Malvina was a high-spirited four-year-old girl, the seventh child of parents who could not afford to keep her. Taken into care, she was diagnosed as “retarded” and confined to a psychiatric hospital. Thus began a childhood of miserable institutional care, punctuated by physical punishment, or forced sedation when Malvina proved too sprightly for the likes of hospital staff. A perceptive psychiatrist discharged Malvina when she was 18, alone, illiterate and unable to cope with daily tasks like shopping. As she tried to make headway, Malvina was kidnapped and forced to work as a prostitute.
Malvina’s wretched fate is shared by many who, like herself, belong to Europe’s largest ethnic minority: Roma, or so-called “gypsies”. The Roma could easily lay claim to the unhappy distinction of being a universally despised and dispossessed people. The European Union frankly states that their treatment constitutes “human rights emergencies” in some countries and, earlier this year, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning anti-Roma prejudice including racial attacks and systematic discrimination. Malvina comes from the Czech Republic, which joined the EU last year. Branding Roma children as “retarded” is standard there, although nowadays the practice is used largely to justify segregation in education. Malvina’s story pinpoints another reality: most sex workers in the Czech Republic’s widespread prostitution rackets are Roma.
Malvina eventually escaped from her captors. She found a place in a Church-run shelter, where she met Fr Frantisek Lisna. The 64-year-old Jesuit priest became her friend and legal guardian (which “retarded” people are bound to have). He organised medical tests that reversed Malvina’s childhood diagnosis and enabled her to be fully independent. She says meeting Frantisek has made all the difference for her: “He’s like a father to me.” However, helping people like Malvina, Fr Frantisek often comes in for criticism from his fellow Czechs, including Catholics, who harbour deeply rooted anti-Roma prejudice. “For most people, Roma people are rubbish. I feel it when I walk with them on the streets, from the way people look at us, or when we are turned away from restaurants.” But disapproval has not curbed his passion for reaching out to “the poorest of the poor”. If anything, opposition provokes Fr Frantisek to more radical choices: he even opted for Roma citizenship as a sign of solidarity.
I meet Fr Frantisek in his rambling parish house in a Moravian village, which is always open to homeless people. Displayed in the living room is an aerial view of Mirov prison, where he worked as chaplain for several years, flanked by an image of Ceferino Gimenez Malla, a Roma martyred during the Spanish Civil War and beatified by Pope John Paul II.
Apart from being a parish priest, Fr Frantisek also gives Ignatian retreats to Religious and lay people. Fundamental Christian principles are at the heart of his commitment to pastoral work among the Roma: “I feel I would be betraying the Gospel if I did anything else.” And, he adds, he likes Roma: “My work is not a sacrifice, it is a privilege, a freely given gift.” There are deeper motives, arising out of Fr Frantisek’s own bitter experience of persecution. Blacklisted as a “dangerous” political dissident in Communist Czechoslovakia, Fr Frantisek spent four years behind bars. He first met Roma people when he shared a prison cell with them and he was impressed by their openness “practically without exception” to him as a priest. “If I had not been persecuted, I would have never met the Roma as I did, and perhaps I would view them in the same way as the rest of the population, who refuse to accept people who are different – our Communist heritage.”
Under Communism, Fr Frantisek was banned from exercising priestly duties. When the regime fell in 1990 his desire to devote himself to Roma was thwarted by higher orders in the Church. So Fr Frantisek chose to serve as chaplain in Mirov prison where he came across a disproportionately high number of Roma inmates. Spurred by memories of his incarceration – “I know what it’s like to have nothing, not even a postage stamp” – Fr Frantisek would distribute packages of stationery, food and other items. He heard confessions and baptised inmates, and some asked him to visit their families. So Fr Frantisek went to the ramshackle and overcrowded ghettos which are home to most Roma people – neatly described as “unacceptable substandard housing” by official reports. Few outsiders ever approach the isolated settlements and priests are conspicuous by their absence.
More’s the pity, because, despite their lack of religious formation, Roma people have a strongly held traditional faith in God which Fr Frantisek calls “a gift of the Holy Spirit”. To his chagrin, a lack of Catholic initiatives targeting their excluded community prompts many Roma to turn to sects that visit them regularly, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Convinced that “they would always rather belong to the Catholic Church”, Fr Frantisek launched a crusade to evangelise Roma, largely through personal accompaniment and ministering the Sacraments. In the mid-1990s, he was appointed as diocesan coordinator for Roma pastoral care, which allowed him to organise community initiatives such as pilgrimages.
However, Fr Frantisek is fully aware that his efforts and those of a handful of other priests are not nearly enough. He has a clear vision for a radical strategy: “The way ahead for the Church is to live among the Roma in their ghettos, to minister to them and to learn about their culture and their needs.” The vision is likely to remain a dream: Fr Frantisek’s consistent pleas to his diocesan and Jesuit superiors to send priests to share the ostracised life of the Roma have fallen on deaf ears. “The Church authorities have no more vision now than they had 15 years ago, when Communism ended.”
If the Church does not go to meet Roma people, it is highly unlikely they will come to the Church, simply because they feel unwanted. A magazine interview with a renowned Roma singer speaks volumes for Fr Frantisek: “She says she certainly believes in God – she is a gypsy after all! – but she no longer goes to church because the last time she went, no one would shake her hand during the exchange of peace.”
Fr Frantisek himself is widely seen as an “odd” priest: “Most Catholics reject me and dismiss my ideas.” Given the negative stereotypes conjured up by the word “gypsy”, such reactions are hardly surprising. Sometimes, though, Fr Frantisek’s efforts to dispel ig-norance and myths about Roma pay off. He tells the story of a doctor who attended one of his retreats: “She started to send me considerable sums of money for my work. When I wrote to thank her, she replied that she had debts to repay to Roma children whom she had harmed through decisions in her former job. She had been responsible for placing Roma children in institutional care under the Communist regime.”
The historical injustices suffered by Czech Roma people – especially genocide by the Nazis and subsequent systematic repression by the Communists – account for myriad social problems facing them. There is no denying that their communities are broken: prey to domestic violence, family breakdown and poverty, with many living off state handouts or resorting to crime to survive. It is excruciatingly hard for Roma people to break out of poverty and exclusion. Officially acknowledged discrimination in all services is endemic. Children either attend inferior ghetto schools or are placed in institutions. Unemployment is extremely high: “If Roma people try to work, they are refused. They are accepted in telephone interviews but when they show up, they are immediately told the job is taken.” Many of Fr Frantisek’s endeavours are simply to help the Roma to live as free men and women, like Malvina, who is now a contented mother at 30.
His efforts are not always crowned by success. Throwing the doors of his house open to marginalised, destitute people has led to Fr Frantisek being robbed several times. There is no rancour as he recalls this; he always forgives and welcomes back perpetrators. As Fr Frantisek talks, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables comes to mind: Bishop Myriel, who lets off the protagonist, Jean Valjean, when he steals his silver, because he knows the young fugitive hardly had a chance in life. Fr Frantisek’s ultimate aspirations for the Roma could be summed up in the bishop’s words: “Jean Valjean, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. I withdraw [your soul] from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”
His refusal to give up on the Roma has earned him both criticism and praise: former President – and fellow dissident – Vaclav Havel awarded him one of the nation’s highest awards in 2001 for his contribution to human rights. Fr Frantisek tends to greet acclaim and disparagement in the same way. What matters is that he will finally manage to carve out a place for the Roma in the Catholic Church, where their dignity as children of God will be respected.
Danielle
Vella,
formerly with the Jesuit Refugee Services, is a freelance journalist.