VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis is making his first trip abroad since he underwent bowel surgery in July, a four-day visit to Central Europe that will not only test his health, but also it will also provide one of the most uncomfortable moments of his papacy: meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the kind of populist and right-wing leader Francis normally despises.
Francis only spends seven hours in Budapest on Sunday before going on a three-day tour in neighboring Slovakia. The uneven itinerary suggests that Francis wanted to prevent Orban from having the rights to boast, the political impetus, and the photographic opportunities that a pope’s reception entails for a proper state visit.
Travel organizers have insisted that Francis is not scouring Hungary and have noted that the Hungarian church and state only invited him to close an international conference on the Eucharist on Sunday. “If I am only invited to dinner, I cannot spend the night,” said the Rev. Kornel Fabry, general secretary of the Eucharistic conference.
But the message being sent is clear and even Francis delved into a recent interview with the COPE station of the Spanish bishops ’conference. In last week’s interview, Francis said he didn’t even know if he would meet Orban while he was in Budapest. Vatican officials have said they will of course meet with the prime minister along with the Hungarian president at a scheduled meeting.
Botond Feledy, a policy expert at the Institute for Social Reflection, a Hungarian Jesuit organization, said it was clear that Francis and Orban disagreed on some key issues – the migration that tops the list – but said that the goal was not to escalate differences or conflicts.
“It is very clear that the 30 minutes that Pope Francis has in his program to meet with the head of state, the head of government and the bishop are very, very short time,” Feledy said in an interview. “This shows that he is not really coming to pay a political visit, but to give a mass at the congress after receiving a protocol greeting with Hungarian politicians.”
Francis has long expressed solidarity with migrants and refugees (he once took home a dozen Syrian Muslim refugees with him on a trip to a refugee camp in Greece) and criticized what he called ” national populism “advanced by governments such as that of Hungary.
Orban is known for his tough stance against immigration and often describes his government as an advocate of “Christian civilization” in Europe and a bulwark against the migration of Muslim-majority countries. In 2015, it rejected proposals to establish refugees from the Middle East and Africa in Hungary and erected a fence along Hungary’s southern border to prevent EU asylum seekers.
Asked in 2016 about Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico, Francis stated that anyone who builds a border wall “is not a Christian”.
The start of the closed-door meeting will not be filmed live, one of the few moments of interest the pope will make off-camera during the trip. This is a visit that is being closely monitored as it marks Francis ’first major and long public outing since he was operated on in July so the Vatican said it severely reduced the large intestine.
Francis, 84, was stripped of 33 inches from his colon and spent 10 days in hospital recovering. He has recently resumed holding public and private hearings and says he now leads a “totally normal life.” But he continues to take medication and cannot stand it for long periods of time.
Papal travels are exhausting under normal circumstances, with consecutive meetings, multiple transfers, and long liturgical services, all covered 24 hours a day by live television cameras. After the last one, a trip to Iraq in March before surgery, Francis admitted he might have to slow down, given his age and fatigue.
But the Hungary-Slovakia program has no evidence of an aged pope or a repairman, and in fact goes back to the frantic programming that was the hallmark of St. John Paul II’s numerous trips abroad. Francis is due to deliver 12 speeches over four days, starting on Sunday with a flight at 6am to Budapest and ending the day in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, after nine separate events.
“Maybe on this first trip I should be more careful, because we need to fully recover,” Francis said in the COPE interview. “But in the end it will be the same as the others, you’ll see.”
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said no additional sanitary measures were being taken for the trip, “just the usual precaution.” Francis ’personal physician and nurses would travel with him to the Vatican delegation, as usual, he said.
Bruni, too, stressed that the main focus of the trip to Hungary was spiritual and noted that Francis has made other quick trips for specific events without fulfilling the protocol traps of a proper state visit. The pope went to Strasbourg, France, on a one-day visit in 2014 to deliver speeches in the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, but did not stay.
After a brief stop in Budapest, Francis heads to Slovakia, where the highlight of the trip will be his visit on Tuesday with members of the country’s Roma minority, who were persecuted during World War II and continue to face to racism, discrimination and poverty.
The “pope of the suburbs” has long wanted to visit the most marginalized during his travels abroad, insisting on stops in slums, prisons or drug rehab centers. His visit to the Lunik IX settlement in Slovakia’s second city, Kosice, coincides with this: some parts of the settlement have no running water, gas or electricity.
Francis will also meet with the Jewish community in Slovakia and hear the testimony of a Holocaust survivor before the visit ends with a Mass on Wednesday in Sastin, where an annual pilgrimage is held every September 15 to venerate the patron saint of Slovakia, Our Lady of Sorrows.
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Spike reported from Budapest, Hungary.