In my tiny room in a guest house on Budapest’s Castle Hill, I was building a tower of towels and rolls of loo paper. The voice of the BBC technician reassured me that I shouldn’t worry, and that we still had about six minutes until I was going to go live, but that my phone definitely would have to be higher up or the top of my head would be cut off. So I continued building my tower, listening to the sharp voice of the news anchor of the BBC evening news cutting mercilessly into the interviewee before me. In five minutes it would be my turn to be grilled about Prime Minister Orbán and the Pope in Hungary, via Skype.
Ah, the glamorous life of the diplomat, I thought – and added one more roll to prop up the phone. And not for the first time, on the day that Pope Francis landed in Budapest, I asked myself how I get into these kind of situations. Well, as they say in Italian, sono pagato per quello.
Not that the previous few weeks had been calm. God’s sense of humour had meant that the launch of my book, The Habsburg Way, and the long-talked-about trip of Pope Francis to Hungary, fell at exactly the same time.
This led to me spending my mornings giving background talks and interviews by the dozen to Vaticanistas, news agencies and camera teams, on variations of the question, “Why exactly is the Pope visiting Hungary for the second time in two years?” My afternoons were spent on podcasts, talks on radio stations and with YouTubers from the United States.
This had been my rhythm for the previous three weeks, beside my day job as Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See and being the father of a family. Happily enough, while the Pope, faith, Hungary, family and sword-wielding Habsburg knights of old began to blur into each other, I never got into serious trouble – most of these topics go really well together.
I noticed this was when I was interviewed in Rome for a profile by the New York Times, shortly before the Pope went to Hungary. The reporter was able to move seamlessly from my biography to Hungary and the Pope, from my book about the Habsburgs to family values (and the zombie movie treatment I had written as screenwriter).
Still, in a way, I had been in a twilight zone of interviews for weeks. And so far, all of these interviews had been of the cuddly kind. But to return to Budapest. The Pope had landed, and I had been at the steps of the airplane and delivered a little joke: I gave him a Spanish-Hungarian dictionary and encouraged him to begin learning Hungarian then and not wait until heaven.
This is a running joke between Pope Francis, me, and all Hungarians: “Which language will we speak in heaven? Hungarian! Because you need an eternity to learn it.”
The Pope took the dictionary and, with a lot of spirit, replied that he would begin now, but only could end in heaven – adding the punchline with a little smile. And then, for many hours, the Pope surprised our nation, our politicians and our bishops with many gestures of esteem, love and an obviously longstanding appreciation of Hungary.
Which was when the BBC called, wanting to interview me in what turned out to be a live appearance in the evening news; hence the tower of loo rolls. I finally managed to balance the phone on top of the heap, found the right position with my chair, grabbed a rosary and listened as my turn came.
It turned out to be a talk not of the cuddly kind, but that was to be expected. Instead of asking what had happened in Budapest, or why the Pope had returned to Hungary, it could be summed up as: “So the Pope is in Hungary. What about migrants? Orbán. More migrants. Fence. Orbán. Bad. Even more migrants. Pope criticised Hungary. Did I mention migrants?”
This is when a diplomat remains nice, but still tries to get in one or two lines that give a different image than the preconceived idea on the other side.
As I was present in the room when the Pope addressed the state representatives, I pointed out that at the end of his speech the entire Hungarian political elite, including the pime minister, had jumped up and given a minutes-long standing ovation: “Does that seem like a response to very harsh criticism?”
No questions about the Habsburg family history, this time, but in a fun coda to our talk, the news anchor said that next time, they would ask about my zombie screenplay.
Habsburgs, popes and zombies – an exciting few weeks.
Eduard Habsburg is the ambassador of Hungary to the Holy See. The Habsburg Way is published by Sophia Institute Press.
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