A Jubilee of Travelling Peoples is being marked in Rome on 18th October 2025. The main event looks as if it will be an extended meeting with Pope Leo XIV, followed by the opportunity to make a pilgrimage through the Holy Door at St Peter's Basilica. It seems particularly appropriate for this meeting to be taking place as part of Jubilee with the theme "Pilgrims of Hope", given the itinerant traditions of the different travelling peoples.
In England, the major gathering of Travelling Peoples each year is the Appleby Horse Fair. This takes place in early June each year and represents a massive undertaking on the part of the local community as it welcomes tens of thousands of visitors to what is a small market town.
The Marian shrine of Lourdes also welcomes an annual pilgrimage of travelling peoples (in French, "gens du voyage"), usually during August. Though the shrine itself is accustomed to welcoming large numbers of pilgrims, the accomodating of the many caravans of the travelling people requires the same sort of co-operation of the local authorities that takes place in Appleby.
On 26th November 1965, Pope St Paul VI visited an international encampment of travelling peoples on pilgrimage from all over Europe on the outskirts of Rome. The weather was awful, with persistent rain, but this appears not to have dampened the enthusiasm of those who welcomed the Holy Father. Pope Paul opened his homily with this greeting:
Our greeting to you, perpetual pilgrims; to you, voluntary exiles; to you, refugees always on the road; to you, travellers without rest! To you, without your own house, without a fixed home, without a homeland, without a public society! To you, who lack qualified work, lack social contact, lack sufficient means!
When Pope Benedict XVI met with gypsy pilgrims in June 2011 he reminded them of this earlier meeting with Paul VI:
You have come to Rome from every part of Europe to express your faith and your love for Christ and for the Church — which is a home to you all — and for the Pope. The Servant of God Paul VI addressed these unforgettable words to Gypsies in 1965: “In the Church you are not on the fringes of society but in some respects in its centre, in its heart. You are in the heart of the Church”. Today too I repeat with affection: you are in the Church! You are a beloved portion of the pilgrim People of God and remind us that here “we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come” (Heb 13:14).
Many of you come from afar and have undertaken a long journey to come here. Welcome! I thank you for wishing to commemorate together the historic meeting of Blessed Paul VI with the nomadic people. Fifty years have passed since he came to visit you in the Camp at Pomezia. The Pope spoke to your grandparents and parents with fatherly care, saying: “Wherever you stop you are considered a bother and a stranger [...] Here not so; [...] here you find someone who loves you, esteems you, appreciates you and assists you”. With these words, he spurred the Church to a pastoral commitment with your people, encouraging you too at the same time to trust her.
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