Government: the friendship is deep between the Serbian and Hungarian peoples

The Hungarian government is committed to “a deep friendship based on the history shared by the Hungarian and Serbian peoples”, deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén said in an address delivered during a service celebrated by Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije in Szentendre, north of Budapest, on Sunday.

Semjén thanked the patriarch for “confirming Hungarians in their Christian faith, a shared Hungarian-Serbian fate and friendship”. Hungary and Serbia are “firm defenders of Christian civilisation”, Semjén said in his address.

“Regrettably, we can see that some religious groups in the west and in the north not only acknowledge anti-Christian and unnatural ideologies, but sometimes they even adopt them,” Semjén said.

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Semjén also thanked Serbia’s Orthodox Church for its promoting the process of reconcilitation between the two peoples, adding that “politicians may make a compromise but reconcilitation is a work of souls and is not possible without the churches’.

The service was also attended by Péter Erdő, head of the Hungarian Catholic Church, and Reformed Church leader Zoltán Balog.