Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén inaugurated a bronze statue of St. Pope John Paul II in Piliscsaba, near Budapest, on Saturday.
In his address to the inauguration ceremony, Semján said that had it not been for John Paul II, Hungarians would still be “subjects of the People’s Republic of Hungary“.
Semjén said Hungary owed its liberation from communism to Pope John Paul II, former US President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
He said the three of them had recognised that it would have been wrong to “drag humanity into a nuclear war”.
“As a Pole, the pope knew that we’re not just individuals but also the members of a nation which gave us our language, way of thinking and culture,” Semjén said.
Being a part of a nation “is therefore also valuable from the point of view of eternity”, he added.
