Inside the Ceferino Catholic Church of Valea Rece (Cold Valley), Romania they speak the Gypsy language. They sing. The music coming through the speakers, turned up way to high for the little room, spills out into the neighborhood. Gypsies outside the foggy window dance in the street.
The vast majority of the 4000 Gypsies of Cold Valley live off a single road climbing the hillside. A row of little adobe huts line either side of the road while precariously clinging off the hill in the back lean a confusion of illegally constructed shacks made of mud and straw and other scrap materials. The view looks down over the old Transylvanian city of Turgu Mures with its Catholic � Reformed and Orthodox Church steeples between communist era apartment complexes. Until the Treaty of Versailles placed the territory within Romanian Authority the city had been under Austro-Hungarian control with a predominately Catholic and Reformed population.
Freedom of religion following the collapse of communism opened the doors for new religions into the country. Five years ago a Pentecostal church went up along the base of the Gypsy hill. They ordained a local man as pastor, financed a clinic, kindergarten and new grade school and began drawing Gypsies out of the overcrowded Catholic Church into their more spacious, clean and well-heated building.
The recent phenomena of Gypsies abandoning their traditional religion for new protestant faiths has been taking place all across Europe, most prominently now in the former communist states. Father Pal, who had ministered to the Catholic Gypsies of Cold Valley for fourteen years, blames the wave of conversion to the �packets� these churches offer. �They (the Cold Valley Gypsies) go as the wind blows. When we were offering packets everyone was Catholic.� Yet those within the Gypsy community have a different perspective; they tend to credit the switch to the inter-community relations of these churches that ordain ministers from within the communities, and appealing religious services, spontaneous testimonies and participatory styles of worship that appeals to the Gypsies emotional and psychological needs. �They like the way they greet one another as �brother�. These methods give the Roma a sense that it is their church,� says Florin Moisa from Roma Resource Center.
It was only recently that the Vatican began to take heed of the alarming number of Catholic Gypsies abandoning the church. In December 2006 a Vatican report was published outlining methods in which priest, nuns and laypeople could better minister to the isolated Gypsy communities which are often characterize as baptized, but never evangelized.
The thirty-two page report claims that centuries of isolation and persecutions at the hands of the majority has left its mark on the Gypsy identity in the form of mistrust of others and a tendency to cut themselves off. It suggests church personnel must live amongst them and establish relationships to win back their trust. �The church itself must become, in a certain sense, a Gypsy amongst Gypsies, so that they can participate fully in the life of the church,� the document reads.
CLICK HERE