Prime Minister Viktor Orbán asked Pope Francis not to let Christian Hungary perish at his meeting with the pontiff in Budapest on Sunday, the PM’s press chief said. Pope Francis was in Budapest to celebrate the closing mass of the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress. At the meeting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Orbán presented Francis a copy of the letter Hungarian King Béla IV wrote to Pope Innocent IV in the 13th century, Bertalan Havasi said.
Pope Francis also met with President János Áder, Hungarian bishops and the delegations of the Ecumenical Council of Hungarian Churches and Hungarian Jewish organisations at the museum. At his meeting with Orbán and Áder, which was also attended by Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén, Pope Francis was accompanied by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister.
The Vatican said the “cordial” meeting lasted about 40 minutes. Pope Francis and the Hungarian officials discussed the “role of the Church in the country, the commitment to the protection of the environment, and the protection and promotion of the family”, it said. Pope Francis presented Áder with a mosaic depicting the “Papal Blessing in St. Peter’s Square”, the Vatican said.
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