The president made a now under way in Budapest, and said that “many think that God will help them by sitting down on a bench next to them or approaching them in the street, asking how He can help”.

“But faith cannot be passive,” he added. “We are all given signs, and it is up to us whether they turn out to be just a tale or a parable … it is up to us whether to take it as fortuity or the work of God’s hand”.

”If you abide by God’s laws and use the talents entrusted to you well, if you seek God not as a physical reality but in your heart and soul, and through your deeds, you shall find Him,” the president said.

Quoting from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’, Áder said that “we are in a close communion with all creatures on our way towards God’s eternal light”.

In his testimony, the president also commemorated the over 30,000 Hungarian victims of the coronavirus pandemic, making a special mention of some 1,000 children who lost both parents to the epidemic.


MTI Photo: Noémi Bruzák