During his three-day visit to Hungary, Pope Francis called on Europe to find its soul again in the face of a kind of childhood illness in dealing with war.
Pope Francis was greeted by residents of the Hungarian capital, carrying the flags of Hungary and the Vatican.
The Pope’s visit is limited to Budapest due to his fragile health, which will be closely monitored a month after his admission to hospital.
In his first speech in this central European country bordering Ukraine, the pope said: “We seem to be witnessing a sad sunset of the dream of the peace choir, while the soloists of war rule.”
The Supreme Pontiff added: “The roar of nationalities has returned,” considering that “on the international level, politics seems to have an effect in fueling souls instead of solving problems, forgetting the maturity that was achieved after the horrors of war, and returning to a kind of childhood disease in dealing with war.”
And he continued: “At this historical juncture, Europe is considered essential because, thanks to its history, it represents the memory of humanity.. Therefore, it is called upon to play the role that belongs to it: which is to unite the far apart, to welcome the peoples within it, and to leave no one as an enemy forever. That is why it is necessary to find Europe revived.
Minutes before that, the Pope met with Orban for twenty minutes, in a closed meeting in which the Prime Minister stressed Christianity, the “messenger of peace.”
In his address, the Pope also praised the traditional Christian values that the Hungarian government upholds, particularly through its “effective birth and family policies”.
He denounced “ideological colonialism that eliminates differences, as in the case of the so-called culture of the unity of sex, or presents reduced concepts of freedom to the reality of life, and boasts, for example, that it has achieved an achievement in the meaningless right to abortion, which is always a tragic defeat.”
Pope Francis also reminded Hungary of its duty in terms of receiving immigrants, stressing the need for “openness to others” in the face of “self-closure”.
He said that Christian values could not be manifested through closures at a time when Hungary erected fences on its borders and imposed restrictions on the submission of asylum applications at its embassies abroad, which cost it several convictions from the European Court of Justice.
The Pope is a staunch defender of immigrants and has consistently called for a fair distribution of migrants within the European Union.