Pope Francis on Tuesday condemned prejudice and discrimination against Europe's Roma people during a visit to one of the most impoverished communities in Slovakia, saying it was wrong to pigeonhole entire ethnic groups.
Francis, 84, arrived at the bleak Lunik IX settlement on the outskirts of Slovakia's second biggest city, Kosice, on his penultimate day in the country.
"We cannot reduce the reality of others to fit our own pre-packaged ideas; people cannot be pigeonholed," he said, overlooking the dilapidated concrete apartment blocs where about 4,300 people live next to the city garbage dump.
"All too often you have been the object of prejudice and harsh judgments, discriminatory stereotypes, defamatory words and gestures," he said, after addresses from a Catholic priest who helps in the community and from several residents.
"As a result, we are all poorer in humanity," he said.
There are around 440,000 Roma living in Slovakia, most of them in the eastern part of the country of 5.5 million.
