PHOTOREPORTAGE: Pilgrimage to the patron saint of the Roma, Saint Sarah, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France, 2023

They arrive in caravans to this small town of 2,500 on the coast of the Mediterranean to honor Saint Sarah, their patron saint, whom they call Káli (Black) in Romanes because of her skin color. Many other Catholic pilgrims as well as tourists visit for this planned religious pilgrimage.

The pilgrimage itself is always held on 24-25 May, when the guests of this small town in the delta of the Rhône River increase the population by a factor of 20. Sara e Kali, celebrated as a saint today, was dark-skinned and nicknamed the “Egyptian”.

According to one of the legends about her, Sara e Kali rescued the three women who accompanied Jesus out of Nazareth toward the end of his life from a barque that had been overturned by a storm at sea: Mary Magdalene, Mary of Jacob (the sister of the Virgin Mary and mother of the apostle James the Less) and Mary Salome (mother of the apostles James the Great and John). The place where she allegedly did this around 40 A.D. was named Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the Middle Ages.

The original name of the village, Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer, now exclusively refers to the Romanesque church there dating to the 9th century, which also served as a naval fortress against the Vikings, the Saracens (Arabs), and pirates. A statue of Sarah can be found in the underground spaces of the church that becomes the center of moving scenes during the days of the pilgrimage.

Pilgrims thank this image of the saint, ask her for aid, stroke and kiss her, bring her votive gifts and pray to her to intercede on their behalf. During the day, several masses with musical accompaniment are held in the church.

The small square near the church and its surrounding alleys are also enlivened with music. The streets are packed with cafés and restaurants and the rhythms of flamenco can be heard in the small town long into the night.

The guitarists, frenetically encouraged by clapping, compete with each other to develop their musical themes into arabesques based on the Phrygian mode, first introduced by colonists from Greece who lived there before Christ was born. During the period of Moorish (Arab) rule over the Iberian Peninsula, this musical form was then further enriched with the ecstatic singing style called duende, and during the last two centuries it reached the height of its development in the Spanish folk music of the Gitanos, who are the creators of the flamenco styles cante gitano (gypsy song) and baile gitano (gypsy dance).

Just as in years gone by, this year on 24 May the statue of Sarah was brought out of the church crypt and carried upright on a stretcher to the sea with great fanfare. She was accompanied by gardians (cattlemen) riding free-range Camargue horses and wearing ceremonial dress as her honor guard.

That tradition was established by Folco de Baroncelli-Javon, a nobleman from Provence; before him, just two of the Marys had been given their own procession to the sea. The Marquise de Baroncelli was born in 1869 and had witnessed how the Gitanos of southern France had been spreading the cult of Sara e Kali since his youth.

This aristocrat advocated for the oppressed and the weak and was therefore a friend of the Gitanos as well. At the end of his life in 1935 he managed to win them the right to honor Sara e Kali publicly.  

By the time the statue of Sara e Kali, balanced upright on her stretcher, began to reach the seashore, tens of thousands of pilgrims were already standing on the big coastal plain. I stood there with hundreds of others up to my knees in the water, waiting.

From that vantage point there was a ground swell above us, so we couldn’t see the plain from where the procession was coming. There were nothing but people as far as the eye could see.

It even seemed that the sun at our backs, high above the surface of the sea, had stopped moving in anticipation. Then we heard the neighing of horses.

One rider appeared above the sandbank, then another… A dark, glowing face then appeared, like the sun emerging from an eclipse.

Her crown, necklaces and sequined robes glittering in the sun, the deliberate steps of the horses, the outstretched hands of the pilgrims… The Queen, the foremother of the Romani nation, had appeared!    

Prayer to Sarah

(translated from the French)

Sarah, Sarah, holy friend, hear me, I beg of You!

Sarah, Sarah, holy friend, hear my voice, my voice of prayer…

You are with us on all our travels, we carry You in our hearts.

You give us courage when we fall on hard luck.

We give You gorgeous dresses in the Camargue region, at Saintes-Maries.

For us, everything here is more beautiful, because our lives are blessed again here each time.

You are as sacred as a Queen to our great pilgrimage. We come here

from one age to the next to show You our Christian faith.

We confess our secrets to You, we introduce our children to You,

we bring You great bouquets of flowers, we embrace You with beating hearts.

This evening we will sing to You and dance around the fire.

With one voice we will ascend to God through You.

This photo reportage is from a trip this year to the Catholic pilgrimage by Romani people to Saintes-Maries- de-la-Mer, undertaken by a doctor, a chef and an ethnologist – Mudr. Jaroslav Pavelka, Martin Krist and the author of this article – at the instigation of the Salesian priest Ladislav Nádvorník.

First published in Czech in the magazine Romano voďi.