In a homily given on Sunday as part of mass in Budapest’s Kossuth Lajos Square, Pope Francis urged Hungarians to embrace foreigners and work towards peace across the globe.
It was Francis’s final appearance in Hungary during his visit. While the pontiff did not explicitly reference the anti-immigrant policies of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, his words were widely taken as a rebuke.
“How sad and painful it is to see closed doors. The closed doors of our selfishness with regard to others; the closed doors of our individualism amid a society of growing isolation; the closed doors of our indifference towards the underprivileged and those who suffer; the doors we close towards those who are foreign or unlike us, towards migrants or the poor,” explained Francis to the faithful. “Please, brothers and sisters, let us open those doors!”
Both Orbán and President Katalin Novak attended the mass alongside 50,000 other people.
While Francis has expressed appreciation for Orbán’s welcoming of Ukrainian refugees, the pontiff’s view that migration corridors must be opened for people fleeing conflict, poverty, and climate change conflict with Orbán’s. The prime minister has asserted in the past he will not allow Hungary to become an “immigrant country.” He also put up a razor wire on the border with Serbia in 2015-16 to keep migrants out.
“I urge you to show favor not only to relations and kin, or to the powerful and wealthy, or to your neighbors and fellow-countrymen, but also to foreigners and all who come to you,” said Francis earlier in his three-day trip, quoting St. Stephen, the 11th-century king and founder of Christian Hungary.
In the heart of Europe, Francis imagined a continent that charts a middle path.
“I think of a Europe that is not hostage to its parts, neither falling prey to self-referential forms of populism nor resorting to a fluid, if not vapid, ‘supranationalism’ that loses sight of the life of its peoples,” Francis said.
The pope also prayed for those affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, asking for peace.
“Instil in the hearts of peoples and their leaders the desire to build peace and to give the younger generations a future of hope, not war; a future full of cradles, not tombs; a world of brothers and sisters, not walls,” Francis said.
Orbán has rankled other members of the European Union and NATO with his soft-on-Russia approach. Hungary has not supplied Ukraine with weapons and has maintained its dependence on Russian oil. The prime minister has also said he would not arrest Vladimir Putin, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and has obstructed the accession of Sweden and Finland into NATO.
Francis was careful to try to keep dialogue open with Moscow. During his trip, he met with a representative of Russian Patriarch Kirill, who has supported Moscow’s invasion as an existential war with the West.
“I ask myself, thinking not least of war-torn Ukraine, where are creative efforts for peace?” Francis asked in one of his speeches.