The Catholic bishops of Romania and Hungary stood by the traditional family model

The members of the permanent councils of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops' Conference (MKPK) and the Romanian Catholic Bishops' Conference (CER) met in Nagyvár on September 26-27.

Their commitment to the traditional family model was expressed by the permanent councils of the Romanian and Hungarian Catholic bishops' conferences at the end of their two-day meeting in Nagyvárád.

In their joint statement issued after the meeting, the bishops confirmed the importance of the values ​​of family and marriage.

"Marriage is a natural union of love between a man and a woman, as affirmed by the teachings of Jesus Christ," the statement said. It was cited in the II. One of the documents of the Vatican Council, according to which "the well-being of the person, as well as of the human and Christian community, is closely related to the favorable situation of the conjugal and family community". They believed that this is why "we are all called to work for marriage and the family".

László Böcskei, the Roman Catholic bishop of Nagyvárad, said at Tuesday's press conference that the bishops of the two countries had met several times before the pandemic, and now they saw that the time had come to revive the practice.

The agenda of their discussions included the synod trip initiated by Pope Francis, the Eucharistic Congress held in Budapest last year, helping war refugees, youth and education, priest training, gypsy pastoral care and cultural assets.

Cardinal Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, said: bishops on both sides reported that people returned to church after the epidemic. In fact, in some places there are even more people than before the epidemic.

He added: during the epidemic, the church learned that it can maintain contact with the faithful with the help of social media, but everyone felt that an actual presence was necessary.

At the conference of bishops in Nagyvárad, alongside Péter Erdő from Hungary, Archbishop György Udvardy of Veszprém, Bishop András Veres of Győr, Bishop János Székely of Szombathely and Tamás Tóth, secretary of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops' Conference, and from the Romanian bishops' conference, alongside László Böcskei, Aurel Perca from Bucharest and Gergely Kovács from Gyulafehérvár Catholic Archbishop, as well as Greek Catholic Bishops Claudiu Lucian Pop of Cluj and Virgil Berca of Nagyvárad participated.

Source: MTI

Photos: MKPK Secretariat; Eugen Ivut/Nagyvárad Roman Catholic Diocese