The difficulty of relations between State and Church is one of the issues tackled by Bishop Josef Homeyer, president of the Commission of the Episcopates of the European Community (COMECE), in an interview granted to the new Hungarian Catholic portal “Magyar Kurir” (“Hungarian Courier” ), on the website www.kereszteny.hu/kurir. The portal provides news and analyses on the life of the Church in Hungary and in the world. Bishop Homeyer was interviewed on the occasion of his recent visit to Budapest, during which he met church and political leaders. In this regard he said he was “concerned” to note that “relations between the government and the Church are not immune from problems. It’s odd, because that wasn’t the case before, and things are very different within the European Union as a whole”. “This relation [between Church and State] he explained is precisely regulated by the Constitution. It is clear that the Church is not merely a civil organization of society, and that its duties and responsibilities derive from its identity. This is an accepted fact in the EU”. “I am concerned he said that the government and some sections of society do not understand, or do not accept, these obvious relations between State and Church”.
