Budapest, Hungary: Patriarchs, cardinals, politicians, and Christians from across the globe are in Budapest this week for the International Conference on Christian Persecution. “We have 245 million reasons to be here. This is how many people are persecuted daily because of their Christian belief,” Hungarian State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians Tristan Azbel said Nov. 26 as he opened the conference.
Azbel has been a driving force behind Hungary Helps, a government initiative to provide international aid specifically to persecuted Christian communities in the Middle East — distinguishing Hungary from most European governments. Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq, told the CNA that he hopes to see more European leaders acknowledge and respond to the fact that Christians are being persecuted in the Middle East.
“I would ask the European leaders to realize the fact that Christians are being persecuted because until now this voice is still weak,” Warda said. “Hungary and Poland have done the right thing to say clearly and loudly: Christians are being persecuted.” Since the Hungarian government convened the first International Conference on Christian Persecution in 2017, the event has doubled in size to 650 participants from over 40 countries.
“What brings us together is the cause of persecuted Christians in the Middle East, and our search for the elements that bring about these dire situations for the most ancient Christian communities of the East,” Gewargis III, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, said at the conference.
The conference has drawn many Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese Christian leaders, including Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch Ignatius Aphrem II, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Najeeb Michael, and Rev. Joseph Kassab, head of the Evangelical Community of Syria and Lebanon.
The meet would conclude on 28th November 2019.
