Bergoglio in Budapest: congratulations to Hungary for welcoming migrants and blows in Brussels on the war
Pope Francis is in Budapest and seems to demonstrate a good understanding with Viktor Orban. According to Il Foglio, “the Vatican exalts Orbán’s country and distances itself from Brussels, in particular with the recognition that Hungary is one of the countries that does the most on the migration front”. But also on the war, like the Hungarian premier, he calls for efforts for peace and no more weapons. Alignment also on gender: “Europe does not is a fluid reality. People and peoples at the center”.
“Nationalisms are roaring again”, Europe must not be “prey to populisms” and do not follow “war infantilism” but work so that there are “creative efforts” for peace. Pope Francis, in his first public speech in Budapest, before the authorities and civil society of Hungary, after private talks with the President of the Republic Katalin Novak (25 minutes) and Prime Minister Viktor Orban (20 minutes) warned politics that seems “have the effect of inflaming spirits rather than solving problems, forgetting the maturity reached after the horrors of war and regressing to a sort of war infantilism”. And he criticizes gender culture and “the senseless ‘right to abortion'”, always a “tragic defeat”.
Bergoglio like Orban on gender culture and abortion: “Europe is not fluid”
“In the world we live in, the passion for EU politics and for multilateralism seems like a good thing from the past – underlined the Pontiff -: it seems to be witnessing the sad end of the choral dream of peace, while the soloists of war make room”. In general, “the enthusiasm for building a peaceful and stable community of nations seems to have disintegrated in souls , while areas are marked, differences are marked, nationalisms roar again and judgments and tones are exaggerated towards others”. But peace, he warned, “will never come from the pursuit of one’s own strategic interests, but from policies capable of looking at the whole, to the development of all: attentive to people, to the poor and to tomorrow; not only to the power, earnings and opportunities of the present”.
Francis then called on Europe to rediscover its “soul”, “the enthusiasm and dream of the founding fathers”, capaci “to mend unity, not to widen the tears”. And he quoted De Gasperi and Schuman who underlined the need for “creative efforts” to safeguard peace. “In this historical phase there are many dangers; but, I wonder – the Pope continued -, even thinking of the tormented Ukraine, where are the creative efforts for peace?”.
“Enough with war childishness. Europe should not be fluid but centered on peoples”
“Even the Europe of twenty-seven, built to build bridges between nations, needs everyone’s contribution without diminishing anyone’s singularity”, Francis remarked. “I am therefore thinking of a Europe that is not hostage to the parties, falling prey to self-referential populisms, but that is not transformed into a fluid, if not a gaseous, reality eitherin a sort of abstract supranationalism, forgetful of the lives of peoples”, he affirmed. “This is the nefarious path of ‘ideological colonisations’ – his critique – which eliminate differences, as in the case of the so-called gender culture, or put to the reality of life reductive concepts of freedom, for example by boasting as a conquest a senseless ‘right to abortion’, which is always a tragic defeat”.
“How wonderful instead to build a Europe centered on the person and on peoples, where there are effective policies for the birth rate and the family – we have countries in Europe with an average age of 46-48 years -, carefully pursued in this country, where different nations are a family in which the growth and singularity of each are preserved”, he added.
Thanking the Hungarian authorities “for the concrete support to so many Christians tried in the world, especially in Syria and Lebanon”, Francis then recalled how important it is “a healthy secularism, which does not fall into secularism” and on the theme of reception he recalled Europe to the urgency of “working on safe and legal ways” for migrants, “to shared mechanisms in the face of an epochal challenge that cannot be stemmed by rejecting, but must be accepted to prepare for a future which, if not together, it will not be”.
In the afternoon, however, in the meeting with the clergy, Bergoglio warned against the “two temptations” of the Church: “catastrophic defeatism and worldly conformism”, recalling that “we are called to welcome with prophecy”. The warning is “not to fall into worldliness”, the worst that can happen. “It’s a soft paganism” because it “anesthetizes,” he explained. And again the warning not to let “ideologies” enter. “The life of faith, the act of faith cannot be reduced to ideology: this belongs to the devil”, he specified. As well as the chatter that “seems like such a beautiful thing”, “a sugar candy” which however leads to the “road of destruction”.
Subscribe to the newsletter