Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 12/Mar 00:44

Conclave: Is A Hungarian Pope In The Smoke? – Analysis

Prominent among candidates to succeed Pope Francis is Hungary’s primate, Cardinal Peter Erdo. His potential election raises questions about both the direction of global Catholicism and Viktor Orban’s scope to wield influence through the Vatican. By Alexander Faludy The 72-year-old Hungarian primate Peter Erdo is tipped as a frontrunner among the candidates to succeed Pope Francis: the 88-year-old pontiff has now been under treatment in Rome’s Gemelli hospital for over three weeks, where his condition continues to be described as “complex”. Cardinal Erdo is a popular figure internationally among conservative Catholics, and has had a close – if sometimes complicated – relationship with Hungary’s nationalist-populist government since Fidesz returned to power in 2010. Erdo became archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, and a cardinal, in 2003. A distinguished church lawyer, he first developed an international profile by leading the Council of Bishops' Conferences of Europe (CCEE), the representative body for Europe’s Catholic bishops, from 2006 to 2016. As rapporteur for the global Synod on the Family (2014-15), he resisted radical change to the church’s approach to divorced and gay Christians. His efforts, although not fully successful in halting reforms, won him sympathy among conservatives in Africa and America. More recently, his response to Pope Francis’s decree Fiducia Supplicans (December 2023), which permitted priests to bless same-sex couples informally, challenged the Vatican position. Preaching at midnight mass in Budapest’s St Stephen’s Basilica in December 2023, Erdo stated: “If we are Christians, we must not only follow a pious philanthropic philosophy, perhaps with content that changes every decade according to fashion.” Instead, he said, “the teachings, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are the eternal standard.” His words were widely viewed as a veiled criticism of the decree. Even so, Erdo, who is generally guarded in public statements, may still be able to position himself as a compromise candidate, offering the church an interval of calm after a period of accelerated change under Pope Francis. “He is conservative but not reactionary, and comes across as both pragmatic and diplomatic,” observes Zoltan Laky, a Catholic journalist with the Hungarian outlet Valasz Online. While resistant to radical departures from church teaching, Erdo “lacks the confrontational tone of some traditionalists”, Laky continues, meaning that in the conclave he could “appeal to both traditionalists and to moderate progressives as a stabilising force”. Orban’s man in the Vatican? The degree of Hungarian government interest in Erdo’s possible election worries some observers. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban hinted at his concern with the topic in his annual set-piece policy speech at the Fidesz summer camp in the Romanian spa town of Ballie Tusnad in July 2024. Citing a number of historical missteps from which Hungary should learn lessons for its geopolitical positioning, Orban included the country’s failure in 1513 to secure the papal election of the Hungarian candidate Tamas Bakocz. This has prompted obvious questions about the example’s contemporary relevance. Fidesz communications efforts reveal clear signs of support for Erdo’s papal candidacy. According to BIRN’s sources, Catholic Church affairs are a “restricted topic” for the government- and Fidesz-controlled media in Hungary, one on which journalists are known to require special clearance to write about. Notably, each time Erdo’s possible election to the papacy is mentioned in the foreign press, that is immediately reported by such outlets as a news item in its own right. Hungarian reporting of the foreign coverage is then, in turn, amplified in English translation on the websites of Fidesz-organised ‘civil’ organisations, suggesting a co-ordinated strategy to drive discussion of the topic. Erdo’s candidacy may also have been boosted by the 2021 International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, attended by several hundred bishops and cardinals from around the world. This congress provided Erdo with a platform to impress peers and make useful connections, The event was underwritten by the Hungarian state at a cost of about 80 million euros. Such an approach would echo, in both objective and technique, the successful efforts of Hungary’s Cold War Communist regime to secure the election of Bishop Zoltan Kaldy as president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). The latter was achieved at the 1984 meeting of the LWF General Assembly in Budapest, again hosted at government expense and preceded by a focused international influence campaign lasting several years. Lately, Hungary has also played host to a number of individual visits by cardinal electors (and potential electors) attending conferences and events at a frequency surprising relative to Hungary’s size and location. Program costs for such visits are underwritten by government bodies, including the Prime Minister’s Office and the State Secretariat for Assisting Persecuted Christians. A mixed record During the 2015 migration crisis, Erdo declined to criticise the government’s hostile messaging about migrants, and in 2016 stormed out of a live TV interview when asked if Fidesz’s vilification of asylum-seekers was compatible with Catholic teaching on compassion for such people. He has also been silent in the face of the effective criminalisation of homelessness in a 2018 annexe to the constitution and the introduction of Russian-style legislation stigmatising the LGBTQ+ community in 2021. “Not once did Peter Erdo speak out; he did not take the opportunity of prophetic criticism,” accuses Dr Rita Perintfalvi, a lay Catholic theologian from Hungary who teaches at the University of Graz in Austria. Indeed, Perintfalvi claims that when it comes to the mistreatment of vulnerable minorities, “it has become clear that if Peter Erdo has to choose between papal guidance and the Hungarian government’s view on how churches should behave, he will always choose the latter.” The cardinal has also been notably silent on democratic backsliding in Hungary, rampant corruption, and the restriction of freedom of religion or belief for smaller faith communities. Yet Erdo’s relationship with Fidesz has not always been smooth. He opposed introducing compulsory religious education in Hungary’s state schools in 2013, warning it would compromise the viability of church youth groups, and he critiqued the quality of religion textbooks devised by government educators to support the curriculum. His opposition, together with other bishops, to the nationalisation of Hungary’s IVF clinics, citing church teaching on bioethics, caused an 18-month delay in implementing the policy while Fidesz unsuccessfully sought compromise with the church. The dispute occasioned public friction with then families minister (and later president) Katalin Novak. Overall, according to Zoltan Laky, “While he [Erdo] hasn’t fully upheld the Church’s independence from political entanglements, neither did he align as closely with Viktor Orban’s government as have some other bishops.” Perintfalvi is more pessimistic: “At a time when we are on the brink of the third world war and when Western civilisation, democracy and the future of human rights are at stake, I think the election of such a man as pope would be a disaster.”