In September 2021, the Holy Father paid a visit to central Europe. He spent three days in Slovakia and a mere seven hours in Hungary, giving rise to understandable speculation that he was delivering a snub to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The rebuff – if it was a rebuff – was almost certainly due to the sharp difference of opinion on political matters between the man from the Vatican and the man from the Carmelite Monastery of Buda (the official residence of the Hungarian PM). An especially clear dividing line between the two is their approach to mass migration. Mr Orbán was one of the leading critics of the German-led open borders approach to the 2015 migrant crisis, which saw millions being resettled within the EU after making their way northwards from Greece and Italy. Pope Francis, by contrast, has repeatedly called for European countries to respond more generously to newcomers from south and east of the Mediterranean.
Since the migrant crisis, Orbán has continued to set out his stall as the leader of the EU’s immigration restrictionists (and in certain respects his arguments have triumphed; the EU as a whole has become much more wary of a repeat of 2015, with increased powers and funding for the border force Frontex and a realpolitik deal with Turkey to prevent migrants from crossing the Aegean). Only a few weeks ago he attracted widespread criticism for stating his desire to prevent Hungary from experiencing the kind of demographic change which is taking place in Western Europe. The Vatican did not formally respond to the speech but we can be confident that it did not go down well in the papal apartments.
In the grand scheme of things, the Francis-Orbán disagreement is not perhaps very significant. Hungary is a small country, with only around ten million people – less than three per cent of the EU total. What it does illustrate, however, is a significant and striking divide in what we understand by Christian politics.
Orbán, a practising Christian as well as a veteran of anti-Communist activism in the dying days of the Cold War, is a “civilisationist”. For him the guiding light of politics is the continuity and integrity of a particular community and its particular way of life rooted in Christianity. All Orbán’s policies, from his pro-natalism and his immigration-scepticism to his restrictions on LGBT activism and the activities of George Soros, are directed towards that end: the survival and flourishing of the Hungarian people and their religion, language, and customs in their historic homeland. You may not think that is a worthy aim; you may think that he is pursuing it badly or ineptly. But that is what he seeks. The past century has been a grim one for the Hungarians, with loss of territory, foreign occupation, war damage and atrocities featuring heavily.
Francis is an Argentinian. Argentina, like most of its neighbours and unlike Europe, is not a popular destination for migrants from other continents and radically different cultures. While its twentieth century history was turbulent, it did not suffer foreign domination or war. It does not face the prospect of fast and irreversible demographic change, and so it is perhaps difficult for Francis to enter sympathetically into the mindset of someone from a much smaller and more vulnerable country. Orbán also fits the template of the kind of man that Argentinian Jesuits like Jorge Bergoglio are used to regarding with suspicion and hostility. Looked at with a jaundiced, prejudiced eye, he resembles the kind of aggressive, chauvinistic nationalist leaders who have plagued Latin America, cementing their own power with rhetorical assaults on alleged enemies within.
In his statements the Pope shows little interest in the idea of preserving any given country as a Christian nation. Instead his concept of a Christian country is one that is above all concerned with political implementation of Gospel imperatives, regardless of the second- or third-order consequences of such actions. Welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, with no eye to creed or colour. This is an attractive vision and one with a good deal of support in Christian tradition. Christ’s instructions for how to treat the vulnerable were not hedged round with caveats. In this line of thinking, to prioritise an individual country’s national interest over the needs of the poor is a kind of idolatry.
However, a key point to remember about those teachings is that they are given to individuals and to the Church; they do not translate neatly to action at the national political level. The command to turn the other cheek does not mean that we abolish the criminal justice system. The demand that we are hospitable to the stranger in our land does not settle the question of how many strangers a government should admit. No less an authority than Thomas Aquinas suggested that newcomers to a polity should have to wait several generations before being allowed to participate in politics, to ensure that they truly had the community’s best interests at heart.
Catholicism has long insisted on the role of prudence in the political vocation. Leaders must think about the best interests of a country and a people in their decision-making. Can a country of ten million open its borders with the same insouciance as a country of eighty million or one of three hundred million? Is a historically Christian nation obliged to admit large numbers of adherents of different faiths, or none at all, such that the influence of the faith is weakened? There is no single correct answer to such problems in Christian political theology. Ultimately what is required is a synthesis: perhaps neither Orbanism or Francis, but some solution which incorporates the best insights from both.
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