House Speaker: Hungary acts as a bridge between East and West

The world today has a “desperate need” for a unified testimony of Eastern and Western Christianity, Cardinal Péter Erdő said in a mass celebrated during the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest on Saturday.

“Such is the will of Christ who prayed for His followers to be one,” Erdő said in Kossuth Square, in front of the parliament building.

Erdő thanked Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, for attending the congress, and called the Orthodox Church leader’s speech ahead of the mass an act “rich with symbolic meaning”.

He noted that Bartholomew I had canonised Saint Stephen in the Orthodox Church in Budapest in 2000, adding that Eastern and Western Christianity were still united at the time of the death of Hungary’s first king in 1038.

At the end of mass, Erdő presented a miniature of the congress’s symbol, a cross containing relics of saints from Hungary and neighbouring countries to Archbishop of Quito Alfredo Jose Espinoza Mateus. Ecuador will host the next Eucharistic Congress.

Mass in front of the Hungarian Parliament at Kossuth Square
Photo: MTI/Zoltán Máthé

Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén; Miklós Soltész, the state secretary for church and minority relations; and Bishop Tamás Fabiny of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary, also attended the mass.

Participants at the mass filled the rows of chairs placed on Kossuth Square, and many also stood around the cordoned-off area and in the side streets leading to the square.

After the mass, tens of thousands walked in a candlelight procession to Heroes’ Square.

Hungarians have always considered it their mission to act as a bridge between East and West, House Speaker Laszló Kövér said on Saturday, at a meeting in the parliament building with church leaders visiting Hungary for the 52nd Eucharistic Congress.

Kövér noted the infrequency of the presence of so many “committed representatives of fraternity and understanding” in a place of political debate.

“I hope that the peace that radiates from your spirits will remain here for all of us in the coming difficult months, in the run-up to the election campaign,” he said.

Kövér quoted from a letter of Saint Ladislaus in which the Hungarian king conceded his guilt because the “deeds of earthly dignity” – politics, in today’s language – cannot be advanced without small indiscretions.

If that was how it was with a ruler venerated as a saint, he said, then perhaps today’s generations of politicians may also hope for a bit of understanding from church leaders.

Everything that Christians believe in is today imperiled by “dark, Satanic forces”, Kövér said. Those forces “endanger our civilisation founded on Christianity, our freedom and human dignity,” he added.

Kövér extended a special welcome to religious leaders from neighbouring countries, saying their presence was “proof that the Christian faith unites the nations in our region and that we can and should build on that foundation”.

Source: MTI