Religious leaders: Pandemic shows people responsible for each other

The lesson to be learnt from the novel coronavirus pandemic is that solidarity and responsibility for each other spans the generations, Cardinal Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, said in an Easter address on Saturday.

Erdő said “realising our frailty” and “understanding that our lives do not solely depend on our decisions and actions” could be a positive outcome of the pandemic.

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“The pandemic can also teach us to better respect the work of people who ordinarily go unnoticed … and who bear extra burdens now, such as health staff, cleaners and shop assistants,” the head of the Hungarian Catholic Church said.

The cardinal added that the current period provided an opportunity for the church to learn the use of modern means of communication.

“Even though we are separated by trouble now, nothing separates us from Christ”, Bishop István Bogárdi Szabó, president of the Hungarian Reformed Church’s synod, said in his Easter Sunday message.

Photo: MTI/Balogh Zoltán

“The power of the risen Christ fills heaven and earth and reaches those disciples as well who have locked themselves in at home,” the bishop said, speaking at a ceremonial service held in a family circle in the Reformed Church of Budahegyvidek, with no congregation attending because of the epidemic.

Bishop Tamás Fabiny, the head of the Lutheran Church in Hungary, said “the whole created world is suffering now, struggling with ulcers and plagues, having pains and, of course, sins”. “The world is sick”, he said, adding that he does not only mean the victims of coronavirus but also those of the many diseases of civilisation that “manifest themselves in concentration”. It has been revealed that there are limits to development, “it has turned out that we are vulnerable”, he added.

The service was recorded in the Lutheran Church of Buda Castle District and published on the Church’s YouTube channel due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Source: MTI