Ukraine War, Migration on Agenda during Pope Francis Visit to Hungary

Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Hungary on a three day trip to demonstrate his commitment to building up a more fraternal society in a Europe wounded by war. Immigration and minority rights will also be on his agenda, issues on which the pontiff and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have divergent views.

The official visit of Pope Francis follows a stop of only seven hours to close a Church congress in Budapest in 2021. The shortness of that stay two years ago left many feeling slighted in Hungary. Francis will meet with children with disabilities, refugees and those living in poverty on the three-day trip that begins Friday. He will also have an audience with Hungary’s president and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Pope Francis will be in Budapest this Friday through Sunday, April 28–30. His agenda for the trip includes meetings with authorities and bishops, an encounter with Hungarian culture, and meetings with refugees and members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Other Christian and religious representatives are also invited to the final Mass in Kossuth Square, the site of Francis’ 2021 Mass during the Eucharistic Congress in Budapest.
Hungary is a Catholic-majority country in Central Europe with a significant Protestant Christian minority of 20% of the population, according to the Pew Research Center. Both Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and President Katalin Novák are part of the Calvinist-oriented Hungarian Reformed Church, which has more than 1.6 million members. “Most people are very surprised when I tell them that Viktor Orbán, our prime minister, and also Katalin Novák, our president, are both not Catholic,” Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See Eduard Habsburg said in an interview with EWTN News. “And that is because in Hungary, we have about 60% Catholics, but we have about 15% Calvinists,” Habsburg said.
While the main purpose of the pope’s visit is to meet Hungarian Catholics, Francis stressed earlier that the agenda items will be affected by current events. "It will also be a trip to the center of Europe, which continues to be battered by frigid winds of war, while the movement of so many people has put urgent humanitarian issues on the agenda," he said.
Even though Orbán and Francis have both called for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war, their assessment of the situation is different. Francis has been supportive of Ukraine’s plight following Russia’s invasion — likening it to a 1930s genocide of Ukrainians blamed on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Orbán also supports a sovereign Ukraine but still has strong economic ties to Russia and has refused to send weapons to Ukraine. The pope has often called for a general ban on arms trafficking and reduction in weapons manufacturing, he has also said sending arms to Ukraine is morally acceptable if they are used only for self-defense.
Since Russia’s invasions of Ujraine in 2022, millions of Ukrainian refugees have fled through Hungary on their way to other countries. About 35,000 have applied for temporary protection status. The pope’s itinerary in Hungary included a stop at a Greek Catholic church that has provided care for refugees. “We will be just a few hunfrad kilometers from the border with Ukjraine,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters. “We can certainly expect words about his pain over the conflict and the search for peace.”
Migration and minority rights, issues that feature high on Pope Francis’ agenda, are also expected to be discussed during his visit to Budapest. Orbán’s contentious stances on migration and LGBTQ+ rights stand in stark contrast with Francis’ views of inclusion and acceptance for the marginalized.
The visit to Hungary “will be an opportunity to reembrace a church and a people so dear to me. It will also be a journey to the center of Europe, over which icy winds of war continue to blow, while the movements of so many people place urgent humanitarian issues on the agenda,” Francis said at his latest Sunday noon blessing in the Vatican, “Let us not forget our Ukrainian brothers and sisters still afflicted by this war,” the pontiff said.