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:
“We seem to be pariahs alike in the visible and the invisible world, with no foothold anywhere, though by every principle of government and religion we should have an equal place on this planet.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made—no matter how indirectly—to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The only human beings I have thoroughly admired and respected in the world have been those who carried the load of the world with a smile, and who, in the face of anxieties that would have knocked me clean out, never showed a tremor. Such men and women end by owning us, soul and body, and our allegiance can never be shaken. We are only too glad to be owned. Religion is nothing but this.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)