Over the weekend, Hungarian Minister of Human Resources Miklós Kásler condemned the increasingly virulent strain of anti-Christian sentiment spreading across Hungary and Europe.
“A shocking, brutal, and barbaric wave of terror has hit our Christian communities in Europe. It is inconceivable that those who openly profess their faith and convictions on the continent must fear for their life,” Kásler said on social media Sunday afternoon.
The minister also noted that anti-Christian sentiment had “reared its head” in Hungary as well, citing that the fact that the country’s surgeon general, Cecília Müller, had been “called to account” for publicly professing her faith while carrying out her duties, Hungarian public broadcaster Hirado reports.
“However, it is sad that anti-Christianity has reared its head in Hungary during this precarious period, and my colleague, Cecília Müller, a national chief medical officer, was held accountable for visibly talking about her faith in the performance of her duties,” the minister continued.
Kásler concluded his social media post with a quote from Robert Schuman, one of the founders of the European Union and former prime minister of France, who said, “Europe shall be Christian, or it shall cease to be.”
The Hungarian minister’s words come on the heels of a spate of anti-Christian attacks across France over the last two months.
On Saturday afternoon, Nikolas Kakavelaki, a Greek Orthodox priest, was shot twice by a man armed with a hunting rifle while he was closing his church in Lyon, France, Remix News reported. As of Sunday, the priest, who suffered serious injuries during the attack, was reported to be in critical condition at a local hospital. French authorities are still searching for the shooter.
Two days earlier, on Thursday morning, an illegal migrant terrorist from Tunisia, who has since been identified as 21-year-old Brahim Aouissaoui, murdered three parishioners inside the Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption basilica in the center of Nice, France. It was revealed just one day after the attack that Aouissaoui had illegally arrived by boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa in September, before travelling to France.
In the wake of the attacks, French President Emmanuel Macron deployed security forces to protect churches and other public sites.
Despite a wave of anti-Western, anti-Christian violence which has swept across Europe in the past month, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, has chosen to focus its attention on Hungary’s asylum procedures, announcing last week that it had opened formal infringement proceedings against the central European nation for supposedly violating EU asylum law.
Nicolas Bay, the General Secretary of France’s populist National Rally party, slammed the European Commission’s announcement, saying: “While migration laxity appears to be the number one cause of the Nice Islamist attack, the Commission decides to tackle one of the few European countries that is firm on immigration and protects its people!”
Since 2015, the European Union has launched five infringement cases against Hungary regarding its policies on migration.
Title image: Protesters gather at the French embassy in London, Friday, Oct. 30, 2020 to protest against French President Macron. Protesters are demonstrating over the publication of pictures and what they see as disrespect of the Prophet Muhammad, in the wake of the terror attack in Nice, France.(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
