Pope urges Romans to "welcome" immigrants

Richard Owen in Rome

Pope Benedict condemned "discrimination" at a council meeting with the mayor of Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI today condemned "intolerance and discrimination" and urged residents of Rome to be more welcoming towards foreign immigrants during an historic visit to the Campidoglio, the Rome city hall on Capitol Hill.

Pope Benedict - only the third pontiff to attend a Rome city council meeting, after Paul VI and John Paul II - greeted a crowd of well-wishers, including a group of Roma gypsy children holding up a "No to Racism" banner, gathered on the Campidoglio piazza in front of the office of Gianni Alemanno, the mayor of Rome.

Since gaining office in elections nearly a year ago which marked a shift to the Right both nationally and locally Mr Alemanno, a former neo-Fascist youth leader, has cracked down on crime and illegal immigration, dismantling illegal gypsy camps in the grimmer Rome suburbs. A series of rapes in the capital has been blamed on immigrants - above all Romanians - and has led to a series of vigilante attacks on targets ranging from vagrants to Romanian-owned businesses.

The perceived crime wave by immigrants has also given rise to "neighbourhood watch" patrols by residents, some authorised by the local authorities but others mounted autonomously by right wing groups. Addressing a special session of the city council in the Julius Caesar council chamber the Pope - whose titles include Bishop of Rome - said Rome had always been "a welcoming city, especially over the past centuries".

Growing immigration however had made it a "multi-ethnic and multi-religious metropolis where sometimes integration is difficult and complex". He added: "Rome will find the force to ensure that everyone respects the rules of civil co-existence and to reject every form of intolerance and discrimination". It would do this if it relied on "its ancient roots, based on Christian faith" as well as the "rule of law," he said.

The pontiff did not refer directly to recent incidents such as an attack by 20 masked men who beat up four Romanians at a kebab restaurant near a suburban park where a 14-old girl was raped, allegedly by two Romanians. Police say DNA tests have yet to prove that two Romanian men arrested for the rape were involved in it.

Instead Pope Benedict referred to "episodes of violence deplored by all which manifest a deeper unease." He said that "our city, like the rest of Italy and humanity as a whole" was facing "unprecedented cultural, social and economic challenges". Rome was increasingly populated by "people who come from other nations and belong to different cultures and religious traditions".

Mr Alemanno said the city planned to establish a centre for teenagers from troubled backgrounds which would be named after Pope Benedict in honour of his visit and as a sign of the council's "commitment to integration".

The German-born Pope, who before being elected pontiff lived for two decades in the Borgo, the medieval quarter adjoining St Peter's, as the Vatican's head of doctrine, said he had become "a little bit Roman" himself.

The last visit by a pontiff to the Campidoglio was that of John Paul II in 1998. Relations between the Vatican and the city of Rome have been complex ever since the end of papal rule and the formation of a united Italy in 1870. Relations between Italy and the Holy See were formally settled by the Lateran Pact of 1929, which defined relations between the two sovereign states. However some secular-minded and even anti-clerical residents continue to resent the influence of the Vatican in Italian affairs.