As poor as a gypsy.

"As poor as a Gypsy," is a proverb still used in Europe--and why not. United Nations study groups have found 80 percent of Roma in East Europe to be unemployed. In Romania, 88 percent are living below the poverty line. Almost 50 percent are illiterate or semi-illiterate. Their life expectancy drops 10-15 years under the general population, birth defect and infant mortality rates are rising. Tuberculosis is widespread.

Ready or not, this year marks Romania and Bulgaria's long-awaited moves into the European Union, taking Europe a step closer to the frontiers of the ancient Roman Empire. With 80 percent of Europe's estimated 7-9 million Roma living in new or candidate countries, wealthier Western European nations fear an exodus of 'barbarous' Roma like that experienced in the mid 19th-century following Roma emancipation in Romanian lands after 500 years of slavery and again in 1990 after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In an attempt to stabilize Roma nine East European governments, in partnerships with such heavyweights as The World Bank, United Nations, and George Soros's Open Society, have developed a strategy focusing on Roma education, employment, health and housing in what has been dubbed "The Decade of Roma Inclusion, 2005-2015."

For the Romanian Catholic institution Caritas Satu Mare, "Roma inclusion" has been its approach since communism fell and religious institutions could function again. They began with kindergartens in much needed areas like the town of Ardud where Roma enrollment was drastically declining, and hot spots like Turulung where hostility towards Roma exploded in 1990 with the burning clown of 36 Roma homes and the disappearance of a child.

Fourteen years since they began, the fruits of their efforts are just beginning to show, with some of the first generation finishing technical schools, enrolled in city high schools and two sisters attending university--almost unheard of here in Romania, where only one percent of Roma achieve higher education.

The Caritas program has been following their students like Melinda and Iliana Kardos out of kindergarten, assisting them with school materials, transportation costs and living accommodations. In return they will work two years in the Caritas program after graduating, helping to fill the void of positive role models while proving that education is possible for Roma no matter what people say in antithesis.

Poverty and indifferent parents is not the only cause of the escalating number of Roma dropouts, but also the school system and unprepared teachers. Valentina's story, written by a Roma child now in the Caritas program, is not unlike many others:

"I am 13 years old and a student in the fifth grade. Every day my parents work from morning till night. At home we don't have water, gas or electricity. Many times it is very cold. I do my homework only when I can.

"In the evening when Mommy and Daddy come home we hug. We are very tired and say "goodnight."

"If I can't do my studies, I don't go to school because I am too ashamed. Because of many absences and poor marks, I had to repeat first and second grade twice. Two years ago, in the time when I repeated the second grade, the school nurse came to our classroom and she found lice in my hair. She began to yell at me and it made me feel so bad. Everyone began to laugh at me and I was put to sit alone at my desk because no one wanted to stay near me or speak with me.

"My teacher said that I can't come to school anymore if I don't clean myself, because I threaten to contaminate others. Then l felt very bad and began to cry, and I promised myself that I will never go to school again.

"Mommy and Daddy are not able to help me because they don't have time for me."

In response, Caritas, in collaboration with the school superintendent, has begun a training program for teachers dealing with Roma children.

In the shantytown of Craica where Caritas has built a community centre, the challenges are proving to be far more difficult. Craica is a strip of land 30-foot wide teeming with makeshift huts of scrap wood, metals, plastic and mud between a polluted creek floating bloated animal carcasses and a raised railroad tracks. The shanty-town began forming during the post-communist transition as factories began shutting down and stereotyped Gypsies became quickly caught in the rotation of being first fired and last hired. Unable to keep their apartments, they loaded up all that they had, set it up here and put walls up around it. Today about 700 Roma live here.

The St. Francis Community Center, or what the Gypsies of Craica call "casutza" (dollhouse), now beginning its second anniversary in the community, offers a necessary kindergarten and an after-school program where the children of Craica can pursue their studies. It also offers showers and a laundry facility for children and adults as well as a necessary counseling program, informing the people of their rights and assisting them with legal issues, and health and educational needs.

"No one else comes here. No one helps us, only Casutza," says Tiberiu Matisan, a street cleaner earning $130 a month, less than half the nation's average salary. "They helped me replace my ID card and we take showers there. We have no water. We have one faucet shared by everyone and when it rains it becomes contaminated. We have to go to the blocks and buy water," he laments in the midst of five sullen children.

Unfortunately the program is already overstretched--forcing them to turn away people like Ecaterina Gospar, whose husband was imprisoned for stealing recyclable iron to feed the family, leaving her with four young children. The windows of her one-room shack are sealed with plastic. She is without electricity or a stove and as winter sets in, she isn't sure how she will keep herself and the children from freezing.

A census carried out by the social workers of St. Frances found 70 percent of the adults to be unemployed, surviving on welfare benefits or scavenging iron out of the local dump for recycling. They found one half of the adult population illiterate, with almost a quarter of the young people following that same path by not attending any schooling. Eleven percent of those in school have already dropped out, while a whopping 64 percent of pre-school age children are not attending valuable kindergarten, promising a continued marginalized existence for yet another generation.

"The people of Craica had apartments and steady jobs till about ten years ago," explains the Community Center's social worker Ana Busecan. "Our concern now is that the children are learning this way of living and you can see the teenagers already starting to follow the same path ... Like you said, after they leave the classrooms here they return to their old ways, but if they went there and behaved there like here saying, 'please' and 'thank you'--they would die. I mean, not like that, but they couldn't survive."

Some of the young people at Craica have spent time in the underground world as street children in cities like Bucharest, and there picked up many of their bad habits like sniffing glue and rummaging through garbage for food. "For some of the street children life on the streets is better than it is at home," says Cornel Bindea, a social worker from Bucharest Caritas who has worked with street children.

Decade of Inclusion and the Church

Education, employment, health and housing are the four priority points established by the organizers of the decade of inclusion. Fr. Otto Borota of The Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Carei in northern Romania feels that the Church also has an important role to play. Having noticed from his pulpit, that fewer and fewer Roma were attending services, and those that did were being shunned for their uncleanly appearance and odour (a cause of their meager conditions), he decided to bring the church to them.

Inside the community he set up a large white tent. In the place of a bell a guitarist strums the call to church - and the tent quickly fills up. "We hold service in the tent only one Sunday each month. It's important that they come to the main church. I encourage this and this way both communities, the Roma and non-Roma, are learning to accept one another."

Fr. Borota's extended arm towards the Roma is unusual in marginalized communities, where the common complaint repeated is that the "priest only comes when there is a death." That experience may play a role in the explosive wave of Roma conversions towards new, reformed Protestant movements.

Sociologists in Bulgaria studying the phenomena of Roma conversions found a direct connection between marginalized Roma and evangelization.

Elena Marushinkova and Vessela Popov have explained Protestant missionaries' success among Roma, with inter-community factors, including ordaining ministers from within the community and appealing religious services that discuss community problems, or as Florin Moisa from Roma Center in Romania puts it, "these methods give the Roma a sense that it is their church."

When Fr. Borota learned that the Roma's personal hardships were holding back baptisms, he organized a group baptism of 14 young people inside the tent, conducting it in a party atmosphere, as is the Gypsy style, with music, food and drink.

"It is getting more difficult now that winter is coming and we are always having problems with rains and winds and forced to always re-built the tent. Maybe America can help us build a lasting church here for the Gypsies," he suggest with a hopeful grin. That's exactly what Fr. Markus Andras in Sfantu Ghoerghe in central Romania did, building an entire church for the segregated Roma community living off the city limits by the river's edge.

The church was named Mary Queen of the World Church, because Roma devotion is chiefly centred on the Virgin Mary. In Roma homes her icon is commonly exhibited on the walls rather than the cross. The cross stands as a symbol of death for the Roma. "The Roma are very afraid of death," notes Fr. Borota.

Or as the Gypsy proverb attest, "Le Roma na kamen e mulest." ("Gypsies never wish Death!").

"Jesus dying on the cross is not a representation of Him," writes Dr. Delia Grigore in her book, The Cultural Laws of Traditional Roma, "but rather, the Virgin Mary, who carried and gave birth to His son. In her icons, Jesus appears alive, as He is, the living Christ."

"Roma traditionally have a special reverence for the Virgin Mary, which places her in a supplementary relationship with the Mother Goddess venerated by the pre-Aryans from India."

This special adoration of female saints by the Roma is made evident by the two major Gypsy pilgrimages: Saint Paraschiva's relics in Romania, and the Roma-venerated Saint Sara in France, also known as Sara-la-Kali (Sara the Black). Legend has it that St. Sara was the Egyptian servant to Mary Salome and Mary Jacobe, who sailed north after the Crucifixion of Christ, settling in France where she set up a Christian community. During her pilgrimage her black-faced statue is carried down to the sea to re-enact her arrival.

"The culture is probably my biggest problem," says Fr. Andras, "counselling child brides, getting accustomed to the musical funerals, and the party atmosphere surrounding the baptismal. They have their own ways that they brought from India and this culture is filled with superstitions and magic. But this doesn't mean they don't have faith."

"They have a very strong kind of faith," adds religion teacher Agnes Koczka. "It's a mix between faith and superstition. In fact they fear God more than they love him."

"The church has been around a little more than ten years and we are now only just starting to organize the community," Fr Andras admits. But with an optimistic smile, he goes on to say, "Christianity in Europe took 200-300 years to take root ... What is ten years?" he shrugs. "It's just a beginning."

Chuck Todaro has traveled and worked on issues pertaining to Eastern Europe. For more information on Caritas and its programs, visit www.Caritas-SatuMare.ro, or contact [e-mail].