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Brazil, Hungary Support Persecuted Christians, Attack LGBTQ Activism

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News reporting from Budapest, Hungary

BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Hungary’s recently inaugurated president says she and her Brazilian counterpart have agreed to support persecuted Christians and to protect the unborn and traditional families.

Katalin Novák, Hungary’s first-ever female president and a former family minister, spoke after talks this week in Brazil’s capital Brasilia with Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro.

Besides supporting Christians and families, the two leaders also offered their mediation in ending the war in Ukraine, Novák explained.

Novák, 44, made clear that she wanted to use her first trip outside Europe as head of state to ask Bolsonaro, an often controversial outspoken politician, to back Hungary’s policies.

With Democrat Joe Biden in the White House, Hungary’s nationalist government lost a political ally and is searching for another influential friend in the Americas.

Novák liked the reception she received. She said Bolsonaro, 67, agreed that supporting Christians facing hardship due to their faith is part of a strategy to halt the influx of refugees from troubled nations. “We stand with families and persecuted Christians,” Novák explained. “But we say no to mass migration because we can see its harmful effects,” she added, referring to what her government views as an influx of mainly Muslim migrants.

ONLY NATION

Hungary is the only known nation with a government secretariat dedicated to persecuted Christians, which it calls the world’s most suffering faith group.

In the past year, 360 million Christians, or 1 in 7 believers worldwide, suffered persecution for their faith, with close to 6,000 Christians killed for the faith, a 24 percent increase over the previous period, according to investigators.

Earlier this month, financially troubled Hungary allocated $25,000 to impacted Christians after a terror attack on a Catholic church in southwestern Nigeria killed dozens of people.

Novák also expressed concern about declining birth rates and traditional marriages in developed countries while indirectly attacking abortion and LGBTQ activism.

“Hungarians and Brazilians know that our future lies in supporting our children and traditional families,” said the married mother of three. “We agree that the mother is a woman and the father a man.”

Hungary’s new constitution pushed through by the right-wing government protects life from conception and recognizes marriage as the “union of a man and a woman established by voluntary decision.”

TRADITIONAL FAMILIES

Novák welcomed Bolsonaro’s “commitment” to supporting traditional families as the rest of the developed world was starting to see a drop in the birth rate and marriages. “We’re doing the same thing in Hungary, and this has delivered tangible results,” Novák said.

She claimed that Hungarian marriages had doubled while the number of abortions had fallen by half, and more couples were committed to becoming parents thanks to state subsidies.

But with their economic and family policies undermined by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, Novák and Bolsonaro called for an early peace agreement, Novák said.

She added that both parties offered mediation to talks between Russia and Ukraine, Hungary’s neighbor.

Novák noted that the war has been going on for more than four months and that “we consider peace to be most important” at a time of soaring energy and food prices.

She asked her Brazilian counterpart “to use his country’s influence” to help end the fighting soon while welcoming Brazil’s cooperation in farming, food production, and water management.