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29-04-2023
BUDAPEST/ VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis has landed in Hungary for a three-day pastoral visit his first full trip to the country since he became Pope 10 years ago.
What kept him away was the tough anti-migrant stance of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in contrast to the 86-year-old pontiff’s compassion for all refugees.
What brings him here now, besides his support for Catholics, is the war in Ukraine.
Hungary and Ukraine share a 134km (85-mile) border but unlike other EU leaders, Orban has refused to back military aid for Kyiv and maintained relations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“It will also be a journey to the centre of Europe, over which the icy winds of war continue to blow,” the Pope said ahead of his visit
The Argentine Pope has been to Eastern Europe before – in 2019 to Romania and 2021 to Slovakia. On his way to Slovakia, he stopped for several hours to celebrate mass in Budapest, the closing event of the International Eucharistic Congress.
The pontiff promised to return, and careful Hungarian diplomacy in Rome led to this visit, which is being portrayed by pro-government media as a diplomatic triumph for Orban and even a chance to end its international isolation over the war in Ukraine.
“The Pope is with us,” declared the headline in Thursday’s Magyar Nemzet, the flagship daily of the governing Fidesz party.
The Pope’s visit, the article suggested, was an endorsement of both the government’s so-called pro-peace policy in Ukraine, and its pro-family policies at home.
“From Rome, Pope Francis sees precisely this unfair struggle and senseless war hysteria,” the article went on. Hungary has refused to either supply arms to Ukraine, or to allow NATO allies to deliver them across Hungarian airspace.
On Thursday, however, the head of the Hungarian armed forces, Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, was summarily sacked, with no reasons given. Media speculation centred on claims by an investigative new site, Atlatszo that French military helicopters were delivered to Ukraine via an airbase in western Hungary.
A different view of the Pope’s visit comes from Andras Hodasz, a former Roman Catholic priest who recently resigned from the priesthood because of differences of opinion with the church, and the pressure he came under to remain silent. (Int’l News Desk)
