Hungarian President talks about Hungary as “a renewed church of Europe”

Hungary could become a renewed church of Europe, “where people could come for strength,” President Tamás Sulyok said at the re-consecration of Saint George’s Church in Ják, in western Hungary, on Sunday.

Sulyok called for a “renewal of our communities”. “We need to be integrated again, removing all obstacles, fears, uncertainties and distrust, although it is not easy in an age of unfaithfulness in which we lose the divine gift of community,” the president said.

He said people thirsted for community “in a world of atomisation and fragmentation, where we see a dismantling of families, an erosion of communities, spreading loneliness and abandonment of moral values”, adding that “faith and love are also experienced in a community.”

“We can be proud that in Hungary still there is a will and the necessary resources to renew churches,” he said.

Referring to the church building, the president said it was a “treasure in the Carpathian Basin … an image of a thousand year old Hungarian Christianity; it is to be preserved and to be presented to the public.”

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