In his speech, the Prime Minister said that it was an honour for him to welcome Franciscan monk Csaba Böjte in Budapest.

Friar Böjte has gained international recognition for his caritative work in Transylvania, where he founded the Saint Francis Foundation, a child rescue organisation embracing children living in extreme poverty, irrespective of their ethnic origin.

Today, the Foundation operates several child protection agencies, schools and daycare centres in the Western part of Romania. As a result of Friar Böjte’s devoted work, several hundred ethnic children of Romanian, Hungarian and Roma origin are now growing up in one of the Foundation's daycare centres.

Friar Csaba Böjte decided to join the clergy when his father, a poet, died after being tortured and kept in prison for political-conceptual reasons under the Ceausescu-regime. This experience was essential for him to understand that „the real source of problems is ignorance”. So he started providing shelter to street children and educating them in Déva, a Transylvanian county seat situated in Western Romania.

As the number of children under his patronage kept growing, they moved to a Franciscan monastery nearby, which had been abandoned for decades. Today, his caritative activity is acknowledged throughout Romania and Hungary. He was granted the Middle Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit by the Hungarian State in 2010 and the European Citizen's Prize by the European Parliament in 2011.

Source: Prime Minister's Office