Personal Visions, Pilgrimage, and Religious Identity: The Veneration of the Virgin Mary Among Hungarian Catholic Roma

Abstract (English)

"Kalapos Zoli" is a deeply religious Hungarian Roma man of Roman Catholic faith. He is a highly recognizable figure, always wearing a hat—hence his nickname [Zoli with hat]—and adorned with gold rings depicting saints on his fingers, necklaces featuring pentagrams around his neck, and gold teeth. He consistently dresses in traditional Roma attire. Despite his profound faith—similar to the majority of Catholic Roma—he rarely attends church services or Mass.
Zoli is widely known as a medium, an exorcist, and a chakra cleanser; he also practices fortune-telling through cards and palm reading and claims to perceive auras. One room in his home serves as a dedicated chapel, containing multiple statues and images of the Virgin Mary, along with candles and rosaries. He established this chapel in gratitude to Mary after his house burned down without causing harm to anyone. Since then, he has reportedly experienced multiple Marian apparitions.
This presentation seeks to explore the characteristics of Marian devotion among Hungarian Catholic Roma, starting from the individual level. We accompany one of Hungary’s most renowned Roma religious specialists on a pilgrimage to Csatka, one of the most significant Roma pilgrimage sites in East-Central Europe, where tens of thousands of Roma devotees gather. Through this case study, we examine the ethnic particularities of Marian veneration—an aspect of Roma vernacular religiosity often entangled with stereotypes and myths. Additionally, we address a broader question: to what extent does the differing Marian devotion between Roma and gadje (non-Roma) serve as a potential path toward Roma inclusion, or does it rather exacerbate vernacular religious conflicts?