This Saturday, October 18, 2025, is a time of celebration at the Vatican with the Roma people who, coming from different parts of Europe and even outside of Europe, celebrate this Jubilee event with the symbolic title  “Hope is itinerant.”  A sign of the Church’s attention to a segment of the population often relegated, and sometimes self-relegated, to the margins of the social perimeter. The same attention that Pope Leo, citing his predecessors, asks of institutions, society, and the Church itself, at the same time launching an appeal to these populations to be protagonists of change.

Below we publish the Pope’s address to the audience participants and his conversation with the children present:

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Dear brothers and sisters of the Roma, Sinti and Travelling Peoples, welcome!

O Del si tumentsa! May the Lord be with you!

You have come to Rome from all over Europe – some even from outside Europe – as pilgrims of hope in this Jubilee. With your presence you remind us that “Hope is on the move” [1] – the title of our meeting; and today we all feel renewed by the gift you bring to the Pope: your strong faith, your unshakeable hope in God alone, your solid trust that does not yield to the hardships of a life often lived on the margins of society.

May the peace of Christ be in your hearts, brothers and sisters of the Roma, Sinti and travelling communities! And may peace also be in the hearts of the many pastoral workers who are here today and who tirelessly walk with you.

Today’s Jubilee celebration comes sixty years after the historic first world meeting that Pope Saint Paul VI had with your communities in Pomezia on 26 September 1965. Almost as a witness to that event, the statue of Our Lady is here today, which the Pope himself crowned as “Queen of the Roma, Sinti and Travellers”. Over the past sixty years, meetings with my predecessors have become increasingly frequent, in different contexts, a sign of lively dialogue and special pastoral care for you, “the beloved portion of God’s pilgrim people”. [2] Yes, God the Father loves and blesses you, and the Church also loves and blesses you.

You can be living witnesses to the centrality of these three things: trusting only in God, not attaching yourselves to any worldly goods, and showing exemplary faith in works and words. Living this way is not easy. It is learned by accepting God’s blessing and allowing it to work to change our hearts. “By her very nature the Church is in solidarity with the poor, the excluded, the marginalized and all those considered the outcast of society. … In our hearts, we encounter the need to heed this plea, born of the liberating action of grace within each of us, and so it is not a matter of a mission reserved only to a few” (Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi te, 111).

For almost a thousand years, you have been pilgrims and nomads in a context that has gradually built models of development that have proved to be unjust and unsustainable in many respects. For this reason, so-called “advanced” societies have consistently rejected you, always placing you on the margins: on the margins of cities, on the margins of rights, on the margins of education and culture. Yet it is precisely the model of society that marginalized you and made you itinerant, without peace and without welcome – first in seasonal caravans and then in camps on the outskirts of cities, where you sometimes still live without electricity and water – is the one that has created the greatest social injustices globally in the last century: enormous economic inequalities between individuals and peoples, unprecedented financial crises, environmental disasters, wars.

But we, in faith in Jesus Christ, know that “the very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner” (Mt 21:42), and so we are increasingly strengthened in the idea that the values that the poor uphold with great dignity and pride are precisely those to which we must all look in order to change course. Your presence on the peripheries of the West is indeed a sign to which we can refer in order to eliminate many structures of sin, for the good and progress of humanity towards a more peaceful and just coexistence, in harmony with God, with creation and with others.

Pope Benedict XVI, when he met you in 2011, said that “you are a people who in past centuries did not uphold nationalistic ideologies nor aspired to possess land or dominate other peoples”. [3] Today too, free yourselves from every temptation of possession, any unjust attachment to things, to remain itinerant in the Spirit, poor in spirit, and therefore blessed. “The ethnic groups that, in interaction with nature, developed a cultural treasure marked by a strong sense of community, readily notice our darker aspects, which we do not recognize in the midst of our alleged progress”. [4] Therefore, today I urge you: do not be discouraged! Being closer to the condition of Christ, poor and humiliated, you remind humanity of the “paradigm of Christian life”. [5]

I encourage you to believe in the salvific beauty that your culture and your itinerant situation bring with them. In 2019, Pope Francis made a heartfelt appeal to you: “I ask you, please, have more heart, more spacious: no resentment. And go forward with dignity: the dignity of the family, dignity of work, the dignity of earning daily bread – this is what helps you go forward – and the dignity of prayer”. [6] May the dignity of work and the dignity of prayer be your strength to break down the walls of mistrust and fear.

What I have just said seems to me to highlight a real mission that you have in the Church. Pope Benedict XVI had already emphasized that “you too are called to participate actively in the Church’s evangelizing mission”.  [7] And even more recently, Pope Francis, meeting you in June 2019 in Blaj, Romania, encouraged you: “As a people, you have a great role to play. Do not be afraid to share and offer the distinctive gifts you possess and that have marked your history. We need those gifts”. [8]

Today, therefore, I echo the invitation of my predecessors: be protagonists of the epochal change underway, walking together with other people of good will in the places where you live, overcoming mutual distrust, making known the beauty of your culture, sharing your faith, your prayers and the bread that is the fruit of honest labour.

Finally, in thanking the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the  Migrantes Foundation for their great efforts in organising such a beautiful Jubilee, I invite you, pastoral workers with the Roma, Sinti and travelling peoples, to pursue with renewed energy the objectives formulated by the Fifth World Congress on Pastoral Care for Gypsies.  [9] I refer in particular to those relating to education and vocational training, pastoral care for the family and the community, the inculturation of liturgy and catechesis – including the question of language – and ecumenical and interreligious dialogue in the world of the Roma, Sinti and Travellers. Finally, I hope that every diocese will develop adequate pastoral care dedicated to the Roma, Sinti and travelling communities, for true integral human growth.

Dear sisters and brothers, may the Jubilee pilgrimage strengthen you in faith and hope, and in walking the path of the Gospel courageously. May the Virgin Mary protect you and my blessing accompany you!

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Holy See Press Office Bulletin, 18 October 2025

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[1] Cf Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, Fundamental Points for a Pastoral Care of Gypsies: An Ecclesial Perspective, “The covenant with God and the itineracy of people” Budapest, 30 June – 7 July 2003.

[2]  Ivi, “The pastoral care of Gypsies by the Church: an essential task”.

[3] Benedict XVI, Meeting with representatives of gypsies from all over Europe, 11 June 2011.

[4] Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia (2 February 2020), 36.

[5] Cf. Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, Fundamental Points for a Pastoral Care of Gypsies: An Ecclesial Perspective, “The life of gypsies, paradigm of Christian life”, Budapest, 30 June – 7 July 2003.

[6] Francis, Prayer meeting with Roma and Sinti People, 9 May 2019.

[7] Benedict XVI, Meeting with representatives of gypsies from all over Europe, 11 June 2011.

[8] Francis, Greeting to the Roma Community, Blaj, 2 June 2019.

[9]  Final Document of the 5th World Congress of Pastoral Care of Gypsies, Budapest, 30 June–7 July 2003.