Minister: there were no disagreements between Pope Francis and PM Orbán

Speaking about the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress Budapest hosted last week, Gergely Gulyás, minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, said on yesterday’s government info that the government regarded Pope Francis’s participation as recognition for Hungary, adding that neither the current pontiff nor his predecessor had taken part in any other Eucharistic congress. “It is a rare honour…” he said.

Closing Mass celebrated by the pope on Sunday in Heroes’ Square drew 250,000 worshippers, he said. Gulyás expressed thanks to the 20,000 people involved in organising the event, and praised Hungary’s police force and counter terrorism force as well as its disaster management authority and intelligence services.

Gulyás

slammed media reports of “tension” at Pope Francis’s meeting with the president and the prime minister as “lies”, saying there were no disagreements at the meeting.

He said the pope had made it clear that he considered Hungary’s family policy “exemplary” and considered it important that the government wasn’t relativising the idea of the family. “A family consists of a mother, a father and children, full stop,” Gulyás quoted the pope as saying. Commenting on a fresh European Parliament resolution on the rights of the LGBTQ community to same sex marriage, Gulyas said

“these kinds of papers aren’t too relevant” and belonged “in the waste paper bin”.

He added that “these kinds of activities” by the EP were “a part of the entertainment industry that’s even more expensive than Hollywood”.

As regards the Afghans evacuated to Hungary last month, Gulyas said their asylum procedures were under way. Since their lives are in danger and because they helped the Hungarian troops in Afghanistan, they

are eligible for refugee status,

he said. Gulyás added, at the same time, that not everyone the government had been looking to evacuate was in Hungary. “If we can, we will help them,” he said, without elaborating.

Asked about the EU potentially supporting Afghanistan, Gulyás said the government still had to look into Brussels’s decision in the matter. He said the Afghan troops trained by the West “have probably joined the Taliban”, adding that the EU should therefore be careful when it comes to spending any more money on that country.

Commenting on a suggestion that more people were signing ruling Fidesz’s petition against Democratic Coalition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány and Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony than the number of people who had given supporting signatures to the opposition’s prime ministerial candidates, Gulyás said

the 2022 election would not be a contest between the government and the opposition but one between the current government and “the Gyurcsány government”.

Commenting on Karácsony’s stint teaching at Budapest’s Corvinus University from 2004, Gulyas said Karácsony’s employment had been unlawful and he had been given preferential treatment by the university. He added that the opposition tended to demand the resignation of right-wing politicians who face allegations of much smaller abuses of power.

Asked about Hungary’s ongoing talks with the EU on its post-pandemic recovery plan, Gulyás said he believed there was at least a 50 percent chance for an agreement, adding that he hoped the European Commission would not go back on its word. However, if the commission wants to interfere in the Hungarian election based on a political decision, it would “go against everything keeping the EU alive”, he said.

Hungary would be entitled to receive some 350 billion forints’ (EUR 1bn) worth of funds from the recovery package this year,

he noted.

Source: MTI