Pope Francis will depart for Hungary from Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport at 6 a.m. on Sept. 12, arriving at Budapest International Airport at 7:45 a.m.
After an official welcome, he will meet for half an hour with Orbán and Hungarian President János Áder at the Museum of Fine Arts, located in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square.
Earlier this month, the Vatican’s “foreign minister” rejected suggestions that Pope Francis’ decision to make just a brief trip to Hungary was connected with the policies of the country’s government.
“No, it’s not any judgment on a government or authorities in Hungary,” Archbishop Paul Gallagher told an interviewer. “The pope was very clear right from the beginning that he was going to Budapest exclusively to celebrate the concluding Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress.”
After meeting with the prime minister and president, the pope will give a speech to the country’s Catholic bishops, followed by another address to representatives of the Ecumenical Council of Churches and Jewish communities.
He will then leave the Museum of Fine Arts to celebrate the closing Mass in Heroes’ Square at 11:30 a.m.
Afterwards, he will return to the airport for a farewell ceremony, leaving for the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, at 2:30 p.m.
Pope Francis formally announced on July 4 that he would travel to Hungary and Slovakia in September.
He had previously mentioned the possibility of visiting the neighboring central European countries during an in-flight press conference in March.
The week-long International Eucharist Congress was originally scheduled to take place in 2020 but was postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Hungary has a population of 9.8 million people, 62% of whom are Catholic. The country, which borders Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Ukraine, and Slovakia, last hosted the Eucharistic Congress in 1938.
