“I am happy to announce that from September 12 to 15 – if God allows it – I will go to Slovakia for a pastoral visit,” said František. He specified that on September 12 he should still celebrate Mass in Budapest. The pope said in March that he would go to Hungary to celebrate the closing mass of the International Eucharistic Congress, which would take place in Budapest from September 5 to 12.
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In Slovakia, František is to visit Bratislava, Prešov, Košice and the important pilgrimage site of Šaštín, the Vatican communiqué specified. AFP added that a more detailed program was to be announced later, but that in all likelihood the pope should not meet with the highest Hungarian officials during his short stay in Budapest.
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During his planned September visit to Hungary, the pope does not want to meet with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán or President János Áder, the American Catholic Register (NCR) wrote a month ago.
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According to him, František intends to spend only the necessary long time in the country and avoid any meetings with politicians. Orbán is a supporter of a tough anti-immigration policy, which, on the contrary, the pope has long criticized and calls for greater solidarity and assistance to refugees. According to the letter, the Hungarian representatives tried to get the pope to change his mind and adjust his plans. The Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén and Cardinal Péter Erdö, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, met at the Vatican.
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The last papal visit in 2003
The pope has already traveled abroad in the past, during which he did not negotiate with the leading political representatives of the countries concerned. For example, in 2014, he spoke in the European Parliament in Strasbourg without speaking to French politicians. He also avoided political meetings during a visit to the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016 or on his way to an ecumenical meeting in Switzerland in 2018. At that time, however, he did not visit the metropolises of these countries, and courtesy meetings with senior politicians were therefore not on the agenda.
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The Pope first visited Slovakia in April 1990, when John Paul II. he arrived at the invitation of President Václav Havel and Cardinal František Tomášek in what was then Czechoslovakia, which was the first country of the former Eastern bloc after Poland, where he arrived. For the second time, the head of the Catholic Church was already in independent Slovakia at the turn of June and July 1995, when John Paul II. in addition to several services, he canonized three Košice martyrs who died at the hands of Protestants in the 17th century.
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So far, the Pope’s last visit to Slovakia was his stay in September 2003, which was marked by the health problems of John Paul II. At that time, the eighty-three-year-old pope did not miss a single point from his program 18 years ago and went on expeditions to various parts of Slovakia, but he could not finish his speeches to the end and had to be represented. Nevertheless, he attended several services, the largest of which took place in the Bratislava suburb of Petržalka and was watched by 200,000 people. During the service, he blessed former Greek Catholic Bishop Vasil Hopek and nun Zdenka Scheling, who suffered in prisons during the communist government. In 2012, it was written that Pope Benedict XVI could also visit Slovakia, but in the end the journey did not take place.
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