Budapest, January 22, 2021
Photo: hungaryhelps.gov.hu
The Hungarian government will cooperate with the Jerusalem Patriarchate to offer scholarships to Middle Eastern Christians in the next academic year.
This was announced in a letter from Dr. Csaba Rada, the head of Hungary’s Representative Office in Ramallah to His Eminence Archbishop Aristarchos of Constantina, published on the site of the Jerusalem Patriarchate.
In the letter, Dr. Rada notes that, since the 1970s, Hungary has been providing scholarships to talented Palestinian students who play an important role in Palestinian society. But for the last few years, the state has been offering a scholarship specifically for Christian communities and churches in the Middle East.
Prospective students can apply, with the approval of their church leaders, directly to the Jerusalem Patriarchate.
The website dedicated to the scholarship program explains that, “The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People was founded in 2017 by the Government of Hungary in the spirit of its solidarity policy towards persecuted Christian minorities.”
In 2016, Hungary became the first country to open an office specifically to deal with the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Europe.
The core mission of the scholarship program “is to provide opportunities to pursue higher education studies in Hungarian host institutions for Christian youth living in crisis regions of the world or being threatened in their countries because of their faith.”
The goal is that “After completing their studies, the scholarship holders can become the catalysts of the development of their countries and contribute to building capacities and strengthening resilience at the local level with their knowledge acquired in Hungary upon return to their homelands.”
The Hungarian state has developed good relations with the Orthodox Church. In February 2017, the government allocated $8.1 million to the Russian Church’s Hungarian Diocese for restoring and constructing churches; in July 2017, it allocated $1.7 million to help restore damaged and dilapidated churches in Lebanon; and in August 2017, it donated a complex of buildings in central Budapest to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and also purchased a parish building for the Russian Church.
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