Our religious tourism treasures are also the spiritual and spiritual centers of Hungary, not only our heritage, but also our future - stressed Ministerial Commissioner for Religious Tourism Nacsa Lőrinc on Thursday at the opening of the outdoor religious tourism exhibition organized on the occasion of the visit of Pope Francis in Budapest's Szabadság square.

This will be the third time that Pope Francis will visit Hungary - after Csíksomlyó and the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest - this is a huge honor for Hungary and the Hungarian people - declared the Christian Democrat politician. He added,

"Hungary warmly welcomes Pope Francis, because as a thousand-year-old Christian state we have something to show him and learn from him."

Lőrinc Nacsa recalled that after the Eucharistic Congress, Pope Francis said that Hungarians have many values. "We think so too, the Carpathian basin has many built values, but Hungarian national consciousness, which has sustained our state in all troubles, is also a value."

We have a lot of religious tourism treasures, and we should be proud of that - Lőrinc Nacsa continued. He said: the aim of the exhibition set up next to Kossuth Lajos tér - the site of Sunday's papal mass - is to present - without claiming to be complete - these treasures, places of pilgrimage and churches.

In the past thirteen years, 3,700 churches were renovated and two hundred new churches were built in the Carpathian Basin, the ministerial commissioner reminded. He added: "these are our treasures, the centers of our communities, and the papal visit is an opportunity to show the treasures of the thousand-year-old Christian Hungary and our communities to the whole world."

"We don't destroy our churches, but we renovate them and build new ones, because we think that this also means our future"

- said Lőrinc Nacsa, noting that the motto of the papal visit is "Christ is our future!"

He also mentioned that the exhibition was organized in the spirit of ecumenism, as Esztergom, Tihany, Máriapócs, Vizsoly and the Mád synagogue will also be displayed.

"These are places where you can meet, as the purpose of religious tourism is to ensure an encounter with the Good Lord, with ourselves and with each other, with our communities as well"

Lőrinc Nacsa explained.

He said: the exhibition can be viewed day and night during the papal visit, texts in Hungarian and English introduce the locations, and interesting things written by local priests can also be read. The ministerial commissioner expressed the hope that the exhibition visitors will visit these places later.

Source: MTI

Photo: MTI/Zoltán Balogh