For others, however, the potential benefits far outweigh the risks. The tens of thousands of expected pilgrims will help revive an ailing tourism sector in Budapest and the event itself could boost Hungary’s image abroad as a Christian country. It might also provide a welcome boost for Prime Minister Orban and President Janos Ader, who will both have a private audience with the pope on Sunday morning.
But that meeting with the prime minister was itself the subject of major controversy – something which helped underline the complicated relationship that Orban and his party have with religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, and what part that might play in the outcome of the 2022 general election.
A pact with the church
In June, a report from a US Catholic news site, subsequently picked up by the Polish media, claimed Pope Francis was not intending to meet Orban during his visit to Hungary because of their conflicting views over refugees and migrants.
The report was later denied by both the Vatican and Hungarian Catholic Church, but by then some government supporters in the media had completely lost their heads and launched an unprecedented smear campaign against the pope, calling him a senile old fool and an anti-Christian, and accusing him of “humiliating” Hungary. They felt further aggrieved by the fact that Pope Francis would be spending only three hours in Hungary but three days in Slovakia.
Vatican diplomats tried in vain to explain that the two visits should not be compared: Pope Francis was coming to Budapest strictly to celebrate Mass, but would be paying an official state visit to Slovakia. Yet the damage had already been done: for many in the government camp, the pope was no longer the representative of Christianity they desired.
Experts say this was a trumped-up controversy. “I don’t think Pope Francis has given too much thought to the politics of the Hungarian government, nor whether he should or should not meet the Hungarian prime minister. For him, meeting the prime minister when he is in Hungary is self-evident and a matter of courtesy,” Andras Mate-Toth, professor of Szeged University’s Department of Religious Studies, tells BIRN.
The furore was also odd in the historical context of the ruling party. The original incarnation of Fidesz, which at that time called itself liberal, couldn’t have cared less about the pope. In 1991, when Pope John Paul II visited Hungary, Fidesz leaders made a point of avoiding him. It was only around 1996 that Orban discovered his attraction to Christianity, Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, a former Fidesz member who left the party in 1994, tells BIRN.
“Fidesz was a liberal party that believed strongly in the separation of state and church. I would not say it was an anti-clerical movement; roughly one-third of our parliamentary group were practicing believers. But Orban and [Parliamentary Speaker] Kover, who talk the most about Christian values these days, were not among them,” she recalls.
Orban’s lurch to the right is well documented. What is less well known is how he won over the Catholic and Protestant churches, the two strongest in Hungary.
Observers regard it as having been a tactical decision for both sides. Church leaders, who historically suffered under the left and were suspicious of liberals, agreed to form a political pact with a party that had started to preach conservative values – and, crucially, appeared on its way to forming the next government. In a circular sent out during the 1998 election campaign, church leaders urged worshippers to vote for Fidesz.
Theologist Andras Mate-Toth points out that it is not unusual for 21st century politicians to use religion or Christianity during political campaigns. “Christianity has a vision of the world and so does politics – these two visions sometimes overlap. The difference is that politicians usually select certain elements of Christianity and instrumentalize them for their own purposes, whereas churches always have broader, more transcendental goals,” he tells BIRN.
Fidesz’s electoral success – four election victories, the last three straight – proves that campaigning for Christian values is a vote-winner, even in a country not particularly religious.
According to Pew Research, in 2018 only 14 per cent of Hungarians said that religion was an important part of their lives and 17 per cent attended service once a month. That compares with the 2011 census when 39 per cent of Hungarians declared themselves to be Catholic and 13 per cent Protestant.
That trend is even more pronounced among the younger generations, according to youth research conducted by the Institute for Political Science in Budapest. “In 2000, 10 per cent of young people aged 15-29 said they were practicing believers, but by 2020 that was only 5 per cent. Still, 49 per cent say they are religious ‘in their own way’, but apparently do not need the church,” Andrea Szabo, senior fellow of the Institute for Political Science, tells BIRN.
All this suggests that the last 11 years of Fidesz rule, and the emergence of Prime Minister Orban as the self-proclaimed protector of Christianity in Europe, has not made Hungarians any more religious nor boosted church attendance.
Lavish support for a ‘lease’ on Christianity
Regardless of the declining number of churchgoers, the informal coalition between the government and major churches has remained intact for the last decade. Church leaders have been present at Fidesz party congresses and religious celebrations are continually used for political purposes.
However, the migration crisis and blatant contradiction between Christian teachings to love thy neighbour and help those in need, and the Fidesz government’s harsh rhetoric and treatment of refugees and migrants, coupled with political campaigns against the homeless, George Soros, NGOs or anybody else critical of the government, have raised doubts in the minds of many about how authentic its Christian image is.
“For Orban this is just another political project, but for believers this is an issue of conscience,” Szelényi says.
She thinks many – especially Catholics – feel uneasy and trapped, but few dare to voice any criticism of the ruling elite. One exception is Istvan Gegeny, a Catholic theologist and publisher of the Catholic news site Szemlelek, who wrote in a recent op-ed: “Political interests are hard to reconcile with Christian values. Priests should preach instead of making politics, and politicians should do politics instead of preaching.”
But from the point of view of the churches, it is not easy to resist the lavish subsidies that come with allowing the government to ‘borrow’ Christianity and speak in its name.
Hungarian religious institutions – especially the Catholic Church, but also the Protestant and Jewish ones – all receive generous funding from the state. An annual budget of 40 billion forints (115 million euros) in 2009 had more than quadrupled to 174 billion forints by 2016, business news site G7 wrote.
In 2020, despite an economy decimated by the pandemic, the churches received a record subsidy of 180 billion forints (510 million euros). Most of that money goes to large construction projects – which usually lack transparency and benefit government-allied entrepreneurs – but they also cover the salaries of church officials, both inside Hungary and beyond its borders.
Religious institutions that provide education, healthcare or social care also receive extra state funding for their services. Experts agree that most churches have enjoyed a bonanza in the last 10 years, though this has resulted in a heavy dependence on the state and taxpayer money.
The week-long Eucharistic Congress – a series of religious and cultural events to celebrate the Christian faith – is also being generously funded with 30 billion forints of taxpayer money, but some hope it will provide an important occasion for the Hungarian Catholic Church to show its non-political side and restate its core values like hope, mercy and brotherly love.
Yet few think the government will be able to refrain from using the event for its own political purposes.
“The world around us is hostile… There is currently a cultural, even civilisational, struggle going on – the struggle for the soul and future of Europe,” Prime Minister Orban intoned during a recent interview with the Croatian newspaper Glas Koncila, which was later reprinted in the semi-official paper of the Hungarian Catholic Church, Magyar Kurír.
“Our task is to defend the great achievement of Christian civilisation,” he declared.
Experts already fear that whatever Pope Francis says – or doesn’t say – in Budapest on Sunday, it will be used by the country’s politicians for their own ends.
