BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Pope Francis will showcase his spiritual priorities this week during a trip to Hungary, where the populist government will try to tone down their divergent views on issues like immigration and minority rights and focus instead on issues where agrees with the pontiff.
During his three-day trip that begins Friday, Francis will meet disabled children, refugees and people living in poverty this week. He will also have an audience with the president of Hungary and his nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban.
The visit will be a political boost to Orban, whose controversial views on immigration, the war in Ukraine and LGBTQ+ rights clash head-on with Francis’ position on inclusion and acceptance of the marginalized and support for Ukraine during Russia’s war.
However, the Cardinal of the Catholic Church in Hungary, Peter Erdo, as well as other members of the Catholic community, hope that the papal visit will be a celebration of Christian unity and that differences of opinion will take a backseat.
“When there is a papal mass attended by a large number of bishops and priests from different countries, there is a feeling that the whole Church is present there,” Erdo said in an interview with The Associated Press. “He makes us a pastoral visit specifically out of love and care for the Hungarian Catholic community and the Hungarian people (…) and I think that is a great joy.”
Speaking after an Easter mass celebrated by Erdo in Budapest, Erzsebet Markus, a believer living in the capital, said that for Hungarian Christians and Hungary in general, the pope spending three full days in the country is “very significant.” .
“I think him spending so much time here is a way of appreciating us and the country,” he said.
Francisco also plans to visit members of the scientific and cultural sectors. On his last day, he would officiate a mass in a central square in Budapest.
But the war in Ukraine will cast a shadow over the occasion. The pope will meet some of the 35,000 Ukrainian refugees who remain in Hungary after 2.5 million people fled across the country’s eastern borders at the start of the Russian invasion.
It is the trip that brings Francis closer to the conflict in Ukraine. His route includes a stop at a Greek Catholic church that has served refugees. The Greek Catholic Church is one of the Eastern Catholic congregations that recognize the authority of the pope.
That stop is a gesture to kyiv, which has called for a solidarity visit from the pope since Russia invaded the country, and sees Francis visit Hungary for the second time in as many years.
“We will be just a few kilometers from the border with Ukraine,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters. “Of course we can expect words about (Francis’s) pain for this conflict and the search for peace.”
Francis has expressed his support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion, which he has likened to a genocide in the 1930s that Ukrainians blamed on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Orban, for his part, has been lukewarm in his support for Hungary’s eastern neighbor, refusing to provide Kiev with weapons and threatening to veto European Union sanctions against Moscow.
Even so, Orban has expressed a view on the war similar to that of the Vatican, saying during a speech in February that his government and that of the Holy See were the only European powers that stood for peace in Ukraine.
Although the positions of the pope and the Hungarian government on refugees seemed “diametrically opposed” in the past, there is not that much of a distance between them when it comes to war, said Andras Mate-Toth, a theologian and religion expert at the University of Szeged in Hungary.
“On the issue of the Russian occupation war in Ukraine, there doesn’t seem to be that diametrical difference because the pope calls for peace and the Hungarian government calls for peace,” Mate-Toth said.
The Hungarian ambassador to the Vatican. Eduard Habsburg acknowledged that the country is still heavily dependent on Russian energy after 14 months of war, but said he believed that Orban and Francisco see the conflict in a similar way.
Francis has already expressed his appreciation for Hungary’s welcome to Ukrainian refugees. During his 2022 meeting with Orban at the Vatican, Francis presented the prime minister with a Saint Martin medal, saying he had chosen it specifically to honor Hungary’s reception of people fleeing war.
That appreciation was not necessarily so visible when Francis visited Budapest in 2021 for a seven-hour stay to close a Eucharistic Congress. Francis did not stay to visit Hungary, something some experts perceived as a slight that was meant to reflect his opposition to Orban’s tough migration policy.
In his blessing on Sunday from his studio overlooking the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square, Francis mentioned the trip, noting that both war and migration would feature prominently on the tour.
“It will be an opportunity to once again embrace a Church and a people very dear to me. It will also be a trip to the center of Europe, through which the frigid winds of war continue to blow, while the movements of so many people place urgent humanitarian issues on the table,” Francis said.
“Let us not forget our Ukrainian brothers and sisters still affected by this war,” added the pontiff.
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Winfield reported from Rome.
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