Pope Francis yearned to be with ‘the least of these’

KOŠICE, SLOVAKIA — I’ve traveled to a few places that made me uncomfortable, even scared, in my 20-plus years with The Christian Chronicle.

The community known as Lunik IX is one of those places. And it’s one of the places Pope Francis went to show compassion to the poor.

I wasn’t aware that the Catholic Church’s earthly patriarch, who died April 21 at age 88, had visited the community about eight months prior to our arrival there in May 2022.

Adi Voicu, minister for a Church of Christ in Craiova, Romania, drives a group of visitors into the Lunik IX community in eastern Slovakia in May 2022.

A small group of us from the Chronicle and Sunset International Bible Institute had just come from Ukraine, where we met with Christians enduring the onslaught of Russia’s invasion. We then went to Košice (pronounced “ko-shi-tzay”), Slovakia’s second-largest city, to speak with Church of Christ members who were serving Ukrainian refugees.

But there were no Ukrainians in Lunik IX. Its 4,300 residents are among the 440,000 Roma people who live in eastern Slovakia. The Roma migrated to Europe from India in the 10th century. They tend to live on the fringes of society and struggle to find honest work.

Most of us know these people by another name — gypsies.

The buildings that make up the impoverished community of Linuk IX in eastern Slovakia offer few amenities.

Our driver cautioned us to secure our wallets and our passports as we drove into the neighborhood of weathered, off-white apartment buildings near Košice’s garbage dump. It was eerily quiet. No air conditioners or compressors of any kind. Few cars. I saw no discernible light from the dilapidated buildings. I don’t think they had power.

Right in the center of the apartment community was a stark, angular building that housed a Catholic church and community center. As we sat in our van, waiting for someone inside to unlock the gate, I felt like a thousand sets of eyes were on me, watching from the darkness.

Two workers from the Catholic center in Lunik IX, left, visit with Brandon Price, director of the Ukrainian Bible Institute, and Peter Haluštok, who serves a small Church of Christ in Košice, Slovakia.

Audrey Jackson, our managing editor, surreptitiously snapped a few photos as I pulled out my notebook. Dutifully, I wrote down the names of the officials who worked in the Catholic compound and started asking them questions.

I was a good 20 minutes into the interview when I learned that this ministry had nothing to do with Churches of Christ. Peter Haluštok, who ministers for a small Church of Christ in Košice, had just taken us on a tour of the relief center his city had set up for Ukrainian refugees and talked about the ways his congregation was helping out. (That’s the story I reported in 2022.)

I figured that Peter had volunteered at the Catholic facility or had some connection to it, so perhaps this would be a sidebar story. But this was Peter’s first visit, too. A friend of his, a local politician, had accompanied us on our tour of the relief center. He and Peter had talked about Christ’s call to minister to “the least of these,” as we read in Matthew 25.

If we really wanted to see a church reaching out to the least of these, the politician said, go visit Lunik IX.

A bulletin board in the Lunik IX Catholic compound highlights activities with youths from the Roma community.

This wasn’t a Chronicle story. I stopped taking notes and smiled politely as the Catholic workers served us tea and talked about the food program and the community activities they offer to the Roma people.

When we reached the building’s small auditorium, they mentioned Pope Francis’ visit. One of the workers pulled out his cellphone and scrolled through photos he had taken of the pontiff — standing in the same spot where I was.

“I think you’re the first guy I’ve ever met who had pictures of the pope on his cellphone,” I told him.

Visitors from Sunset International Bible Institute and The Christian Chronicle stand in the sanctuary of the Catholic church in Lunik IX.

A book produced after Pope Francis’ visit to Lunik IX displays an image of the pontiff in the sanctuary of the Catholic church.

But Pope Francis didn’t stay in sanctuary, nor did he confine himself to the gated compound during his visit to Lunik IX. He spoke from a  stage set up in the middle of the Roma community, out among the people who gave me great pause — the people whose presence had me constantly checking to make sure my wallet was secure.

“We cannot reduce the reality of others to fit our own pre-packaged ideas,” Francis said during his visit, reported by Reuters. “People cannot be pigeonholed. … All too often you have been the object of prejudice and harsh judgments, discriminatory stereotypes, defamatory words and gestures.

“As a result, we are all poorer in humanity.”

Pope Francis addresses members of the Roma community at Lunik IX on Sept. 14, 2021.

After the trip, I filed away my notes and photos, figuring they’d never grace the pages of the Chronicle.

But my brief visit to that Roma community still haunts me.

I returned to Ukraine in 2024 and visited a suburb of the capital called Irpin. The Russians took over the town in the early days of the invasion, and many of the apartment buildings in Irpin are pock-marked with bullet holes and damage from bombs. I couldn’t help but see a resemblance to the apartment buildings in Lunik IX.

Playground equipment stands in front of a battle-damaged apartment building in Irpin, Ukraine, in June 2024.

Around the world, Catholics, Protestants and even people of non-Christian faiths are offering tributes to “The Pope of the People.” They remember Francis as a champion of the downtrodden, the vulnerable, the refugee, the poor.

I’m reminded of another man we lost recently who also was known for his faith — Jimmy Carter. The peanut farmer from Georgia became our country’s 39th president and founder of the Carter Center to promote human rights. In 2002, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech, he pondered the question, “What is the greatest challenge the world faces in the 21st century?”

“I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth,” he said.

“People cannot be pigeonholed. … All too often you have been the object of prejudice and harsh judgments, discriminatory stereotypes, defamatory words and gestures. As a result, we are all poorer in humanity.”

This ever-growing disparity is at the heart of so many of the world’s problems. We cloak our angst in political views and preconceptions of “the other” — the people who don’t look like us, act like us or believe like us. But strip away all these trappings, and at the core we find the age-old struggle between the haves and the have-nots.

A poster board in the Lunik IX compound displays the Lord’s Prayer in the language of the Roma people.

In Christ we see that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Or, as Proverbs 22:2 puts it, “Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all.”

For all the differences that exist among Catholics, Protestants and Churches of Christ, I think there’s a lesson for all of us in the life of Pope Francis.

He was willing, and even yearned, to be among people in uncomfortable places.

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected], and follow him on X @eriktryggestad.

Filed under: Catholic Catholicism Churches of Christ in Slovakia Conflict in Ukraine Insight International least of these Pope Francis Roma people Slovakia Top Stories Ukrainian refugees