Here is what Pope Francis told PM Orbán, President Novák, church and political leaders

Pope Francis in a speech in Budapest on Friday lamented how “we must watch as the choir singing the dream of peace is eclipsed by the soloists of war pressing forward.” Meeting Hungarian politicians, diplomats and other dignitaries in the Prime Minister’s Office as part of his apostolic visit to Hungary, the pope said that peace was not achieved “by following strategic interests but by pursuing policies focusing on everyone’s interests, people, the poor and the future.”

Citing EU founder Robert Schumann, Francis said: “World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.” Referring to Ukraine, Francis said the present era posed many dangers, “but where are the creative efforts safeguarding peace?” International politics is “more about inciting antagonism rather than finding solutions … regressing into a kind of warlike infantilism”, the pope said. Referring to Europe’s role, he said it should “summon the lost, embrace peoples, and consider nobody as an eternal enemy.” Pointing to the founding fathers of the community, he said they had been able to cast their glance “across national borders and over immediate needs … and build unity rather than deepening divisions”.

Europe, a melting pot of 27 nations, needs harmony and unity that does not crush the individual parts that fit well into the whole, he said. He quoted Hungary’s Fundamental Law: “We hold that individual freedom can only be complete in cooperation with others … We believe that our national culture is a rich contribution to the diversity of European unity.” “I am thinking of a Europe that does not become hostage to its parts and a victim of self-aggrandising populism, but is also not … a representative of an abstract supra-nationality that ignores the life of its people.” This “small-minded path of ideological colonialism” erases differences, such as so-called gender culture, or puts narrow concepts of freedom before the reality of life, boasting as an achievement, for example, the right to abortion, the pope said.

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Europe needs to be humane and person-centred, with effective policies for the family and birth, the pontiff said, praising Hungary’s “carefully tended” family policy. Referring to Budapest’s landmark Chain Bridge as an illustration, the pope said its iron couplings summoned an image of Europe “consisting of many differnt links, whose strength is provided by unity”. “Christianity helps in building such a Europe,” he said, adding that Hungary was a bridge-builder since “its different denominations live side by side, without conflict, respecting each another and cooperating in a constructive spirit.”

Francis called Budapest a “city of saints”, mentioning King Saint Stephen as an example, whose instructions to his son were “a kind of spiritual testimony to the Hungarian nation”, especially when it came to passages in which the sainted king advocated love and charity “not only towards kinsmen and relatives, or noblemen, or the rich, or neighbours and people living here, but towards strangers, too”. He quoted Stephen as advocating “the practice of love”, adding “be meek and never resist truth”.