Pope Francis Tells Hungary’s Orban to Be Open to Migrants
Summary
- The pontiff and the prime minister have taken prominent stands on opposite sides of the migration questions
Pope Francis, visiting Hungary, told Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, an anti-immigration hard-liner, that the country should welcome foreigners and that European nations should together facilitate the reception of refugees and other migrants.
The pope, who has made the defense of migrants a signature issue of his reign, made his remarks on Friday at the start of a three-day visit to Hungary.
Addressing Mr. Orbán and other dignitaries including President Katalin Novák, Pope Francis quoted the medieval monarch St. Stephen I, Hungary’s first king, who urged his son to show favor to foreigners and “to welcome strangers with benevolence and to hold them in esteem, so that they prefer to be with you rather than elsewhere."
Mr. Orbán has been a vocal opponent of open immigration policies. During the 2015 Syrian refugees crisis he built a fence along his country’s border with Serbia and ordered military troops to expel migrants. Last year, he stoked international controversy with a speech denouncing the mixing of European and non-European nations. “We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race, and we do not want to become a mixed race either," he said.
Pope Francis on Friday called on European countries to work together to establish “secure and legal corridors and established processes" for receiving those fleeing war, poverty and climate change.
During his visit to Hungary, which will be limited to the capital Budapest and will end Sunday afternoon, the pope will meet with some refugees of the war in Ukraine. There are 35,000 refugees from the war registered in Hungary, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, and there have been 2.5 million border crossings into Hungary from Ukraine since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Pope Francis struck a more harmonious note with the Orbán government by decrying “gender theory," a term the pope has used to describe the idea that gender isn’t fixed to biological sex, and which he said on Friday was an example of “ideological colonization" by “a fluid, if not vapid, ‘supranationalism’ that loses sight of the lives of its peoples." A number of European governments have supported a lawsuit against a Hungarian law, criticized as anti-LGBT, that restricts the depiction of homosexuality or transgender interventions in media content for minors.
The pope also praised Hungary for its “effective policies for natality and the family." The country provides subsidies and tax breaks for large families in an effort to encourage higher fertility.
