During the last day of his visit to Hungary April 29, Pope Francis met with Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion and talked to him for 20 minutes. Only the Vatican Nuncio in Budapest Archbishop Michael Wallace Banach was present at the meeting, which was characterized as “cordial,” according to Vatican News. They met at the Apostolic Nunciature where the Holy Father is staying.
Hilarion has been for 13 years “foreign minister” of Moscow Patriarch’s Kirill, and was appointed Metropolitan of Budapest in June 2022. Pope Francis has met him several times in the past. On his flight back to Rome, the Pope was asked by AGI news agency Eliana Ruggiero whether he talked about Ukraine with Hilarion and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
“I believe that peace is always made by opening channels, never can peace be made by closure. I invite everyone to open relationships, channels of friendship. This is not easy. The same speech I made in general, I made it with Orbán and I made it a little bit everywhere”, the Pope answered according to the transcript published by the Holy See.
“Hilarion is someone I respect so much, and we always had a good relationship. And he was kind enough to come and see me, then he was at the Mass, and I saw him here at the airport as well. Hilarion is an intelligent person with whom you can talk, and these relationships need to be maintained, because if we talk about ecumenism and then we say, ‘I like this, I don’t like that'... We need to have an outstretched hand with everyone, and also to receive the hand of others.”
