Hundreds of members of the Irish Traveller community, including relatives of victims of the Carrickmines fire disaster, will have an audience with Pope Francis on Monday in the Vatican.
A spokesperson for the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin said the meeting has been arranged as part of a much bigger assembly of nomadic people to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first ever visit by a pontiff to a gypsy camp made when Pope Paul VI travelled to Pomezia on the outskirts of Rome in 1965.
A spokesperson for Marian Pilgrimages told RTÉ News that up to 400 Travellers with roots in Ireland are expected to travel.
Traveller sources said a number of relatives of the deceased from the Carrickmines fire disaster will be participating.
However, the trauma caused by the tragic events in Carrickmines has forced one leading Traveller to pull out of the pilgrimage.
Jim O'Brien, the CEO of the Bray Travellers' Development Group, had been appointed to lead a party of ten in the contingent from the Parish of the Travelling people in Dublin.
Speaking to RTÉ News from Wexford where he and his wife joined hundreds of mourners at today's prayer service for five members of the Connors family who perished in the fire, he said he could not express in words how hard the disaster had hit him.
Five of the ten people who died on 10 October on the temporary halting site lived much of their lives in the Bray area.
On Tuesday Willie Lynch and his partner Tara Gilbert and their children, Jody and Kelsey, together with Willie's brother Jimmy Lynch, were buried in the Co Wicklow town.
However, Mr O'Brien said he was delighted to learn that a relative of the five fatalities from the Connors family had been assigned his place on the pilgrimage.
"God works in wondrous ways," he remarked.
According to Marian Pilgrimages, the 52-strong Dublin parish group will travel from Dublin Airport early tomorrow morning.
They will be joined in Rome over the weekend by others from Traveller communities in the south and west of the country.
Irish Travellers based in Britain will also travel in organised groups and they will all participate in a programme which includes Masses and devotions at the Way of the Cross in Rome's Colosseum.
But the highlight will be Monday's audience with Pope Francis in the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall at 11.45am local time, which will be attended by thousands of Travellers from many countries.
