Religion
In Spain, gitanos were traditionally Roman Catholics who participated in four of the church's sacraments (baptism, marriage, confirmation, and extreme unction). They are not regular churchgoers. They rarely go to folk healers, and they participate fully in Spain's state-supported medical system. Gitanos have a special involvement with recently dead kin and visit their graves frequently. They spend more money than non-Gitanos of equivalent economic classes in adorning grave sites.
The Spanish Evangelical Federation (mostly composed by members of the Assemblies of God and Pentecostal) claims that 150,000 Gitanos have joined their faith in Spain. The Romani Evangelical Assembly is the only religious institution entirely led and composed by Roma.
Read more about this topic: Romani People In Spain
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Those to whom God has imparted religion by feeling of the heart are very fortunate and are rightly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give it by feeling of the heart—without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one’s religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.”
—William James (1842–1910)