[News] Pope's visit to Hungary dominated by Ukraine war

[BirSaNN]

Pope Francis is 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.

Unlike other EU leaders, Mr Orban has refused to back military aid for Kyiv and maintained relations with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

The Pope arrived in a small white Fiat, in a convoy of black limousines, to a spectacular parade by Hungarian Hussars on horseback outside the presidential palace in the castle district, overlooking the city.

He walked cautiously, with a stick, after a knee injury last year, but his voice was strong.

"We seem to be witnessing the sorry sunset of that choral dream of peace, as the soloists of war now take over," he told assembled dignitaries.

"World peace cannot be ensured except by creative efforts, proportional to the dangers threatening it", he quoted the Schuman Declaration of May 1950 which set out the founding principles of the forerunner to the European Union.

"At the present time, those dangers are many indeed, but I ask myself, thinking not least of war-torn Ukraine, where are creative efforts for peace?"

The Pope criticised what he called the rise of nationalism. And made a plea for more compassion from his hosts towards asylum seekers.

"When we think of Christ present in so many of our brothers and sisters who flee in desperation from conflicts, poverty and climate change, we feel bound to confront the problem without excuses and delay," he said.

Europe should work for "secure and legal corridors" to help refugees to safety, he continued.

Government ministers listened stony-faced.

In 2015, the Hungarian government built a razor-wire fence the whole 170km (105 miles) length of its border with Serbia, and has since added double and triple layers.

Last year, there were 158,000 push backs, or "escorts" as the Hungarian police describe them, of migrants who managed to enter Hungary and were expelled into Serbia.

The prime minister told the Pope, according to his spokesman, that Hungary only had a future if it stayed on the Christian road, and the Christian road was today the road of peace.

There was also praise in the Pope's speech, for the Hungarian government's attempts to defend the traditional family.

"I think of a Europe that is not hostage to its parts, neither falling prey to self-referential forms of populism, nor resorting to a fluid…'supranationalism' that loses sight of the life of its peoples," he said.

As an example, he cited what he called "so-called gender theory" and vaunting as progress a senseless "right to abortion" which is always a tragic defeat.

In the afternoon, the Pope visited St Stephen's Basilica, the main church or cathedral in downtown Budapest, for a meeting with bishops and clergy.

link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65415939