When more than a million refugees and economic migrants saw Europe a decade ago, Pope Francis urged compassion and, in a sample of empathy and support, washed the feet of 12 asylum seekers at the Italian reception center.
Cardinal Peter Erdo, the Hungarian Archbishop, considered a contender to succeed Francis, tok a different approach: citing legal obstacles, he ordered that the doors of the church in Hungary closed the migrants, saying that women’s forces. “
He reversed his position after an audience with Francis, and never hugged inflammatory messages about migrants from Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.
But the episode horrified the liberals and pleased the distrustful conservatives of the Pope’s cozy forms. And he helped establish Cardinal Erdo, the Archbishop of Esztergom Budapest, as a standard bearer within the Roman Catholic Church who want to reverse what they see as Francis’s excessive emphasis on emotional gestures and doctrine.
Multilingual and an authority in canonical law, Cardinal Erdo has written widely about arcana aspects of the Church’s legal system and has dedicated much of his career to the scholarship. In addition to a period of two years as a pastor after his ordination in 1975, he has little direct experience with the daily problems of the churches.
That could work against him while the Church faces the challenge of reverence a constant drift towards secularism throughout Europe.
“He is a lawyer, no shepherd,” said Istvan Geeny, president of the Szemlelek Foundation, a group of Hungarians who directs a Catholic news portal.
“Intellectual, he is a genius that can think of five different things at the same time,” he said, “but he has never dropped people. Relationships with them formally, not emotionally.”
Cardinal Erdo has also developed links with many of the cardinals who will choose the next Pope. It is a family figure among Catholic leaders in the West, which constitute a powerful, divided block, divided into the conclave, having served from 2006 to 2016 as president of the Council of the Conferences of Europe of the Bishops. He has also built bridges with Catholic leaders in Latin America and Africa.
Like Pope John Paul II of Poland, who became the first pontiff of Eastern Europe in 1978, Cardinal Erdo, 72, entered the priesthood during the communist domain of his country of origin. It was a moment of forced commitments that left a deep brand in its perspective.
Some conservatives support Cardinal Erdo in the belief that he would return the time of John Paul and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, a theologian of deep scholarship and, at some point, dogmatic opinions, and put an end to Francis’s progressive ideas.
But the Hungarians who have worked with him say that it is less doctrinal than some fans believe. “It’s a liberal conservative,” said Tibor Gorfol, Vigil Editor” The Official Gazette of the Church of Hungaros.
“It is not a really hard alineator” and “never directly criticized Pope Francis,” he said.
Cardinal Erdo supported the reforms of the second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which sought to modernize the language used by the Church in the services, among other changes.
But he has spoken against allowing divorced Catholics to receive communion and against priests blessing homosexual couples. In a 2019 interview with Robert Moynihan, the inside editor The Vatican Magazine, Cardinal Erdo spoke of the need to “protect the flame” or the traditional Christian faith in an increasingly secular world.
However, in Hungary, Cardinal Erdo has not been successful in the deceleration of an upward secular tide.
Appointed archbishop in 2002 by John Paul, Cardinal Erdo had a duration of charge in the number of Hungarians who declare Roman Catholics. Between 2011 and 2022, according to the official results of the census, the number fell by more than one million to 2.6 million. That shook the Hungarian church and Mr. Orban, which announces Hungary as a bastion of Christian values.
Cardinal Erdo has generally avoided the intervention in polarized pollious Hungarians, but caused outrage in 2023 by attending a picnic held by high -level figures at the Fidesz ruling party. Hello, they also dismay the Hungarian Catholics of liberal mentality by not defending Francisco against an abuse campaign for the migration crisis of Fidesz duration of Europe.
Peter Marki-Zay, a Catholic mayor of the Church who led a failed opposition campaign against Mr. Orban in a 2022 election, described Cardinal Erdo as a “bishop of the typical communist era in Hungary” that “won” deals with anything. “
Hungarian Catholics who have worked with him say that silence reflected his caution personality and the desire to avoid antagonizing a government that has lavished funds in the Church.
Cardinal Erdo also initially remained silent in response to accusations of sexual abuse against a Catholic priest made by a man who said in 2003 that he had been abused of being abused as a child. Cardinal Erdo then suspended the priest.
“Unfortunately, silence is the main strategy of the Hungarian Catholic Church” under Cardinal Erdo, said Mr. Gorfol, the editor.
A Cardinal Erdo spokesman did not respond to a request for comments.
Mate Halmos in Budapest contributed reports.