Almost four months after his trip to Hungary, Pope Francis received Hungarian President Katalin Novák for 45 minutes in private on August 25, 2023, the Vatican press office reported. This second visit by the President to the Vatican took place against the backdrop of diplomatic efforts to find a resolution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as Novák was in Ukraine on August 23.
During the audience, the Pope hand-dedicated a photo album commemorating his April 28-30 trip to Budapest. In it, he expressed the hope that Hungary would “spread a message of peace to war-wounded Europe.”
The 86-year-old Pontiff also presented his host with a bronze sculpture of a vine and a dove, on the theme of peace.
The president, who spoke in Spanish without an interpreter, presented the Pontiff with an icon of the Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, in the west of the country, home to a significant Hungarian minority: a symbolic gift, since since 2014, Ukrainian laws restricting minority rights in this region have been a source of tension between Ukraine and Hungary.