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The Archdiocese of Esztergom-Budapest warned a priest against political interventions after the Hungarian prime minister’s public call for the hierarchy to distance itself from his statements.
“I expect the Catholic Church immediately, publicly and completely to condemn the statements made by Zoltán Osztie,” Prime Minister Péter Magyar wrote on social media on Thursday, referring to a sermon preached by Fr Osztie in north-east Hungary the previous Saturday.
Fr Osztie was preaching at St Martin’s Church in Feldebrő to a pilgrimage group from his inner-city Budapest parish of Our Lady, which subsequently shared the video on its online channels.
Magyar’s social media post included the recording of the sermon, in which Osztie asked: “How many of our Christian brothers and sisters go to church, vote for Tisza, and understand nothing?”
The priest described Tisza, the centre-right party Magyar leads, as an “unbelieving, immoral, traitorous element that betrays the country to the great powers and financial circles”. He told his parishioners: “I am proud, by the way, that there are no such people around me – and if there were, I would wish they weren’t.”
Osztie has long been associated with the right-wing populist Fidesz-KDNP alliance led by former prime minister Viktor Orbán, which governed Hungary from 2010 until Magyar’s victory in elections this April.
The priest has continued to court controversy since the change of government, celebrating a mass for Orbán’s birthday in May and speaking at a Fidesz organised rally in July. On 20 July he told the left-wing daily Népszava that Magyar was “an instrument of Satan”.
Magyar’s post had attracted 55,000 likes and 14,000 comments by Sunday. An early comment came from the official account of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, referring to the bishops’ official statement of neutrality ahead of April 2026 elections.
The Archdiocese of Esztergom-Budapest on Friday in its own social media post, saying it was “saddened and shocked to learn of the statements made by Zoltán Osztie during his Mass in Feldebrő”.
It continued: “The offensive characterisation and stigmatisation of people are incompatible with the teachings of Christ and do not speak in the spirit of the Gospel.”
The archdiocesan office had, the message concluded, “warned and called upon Fr Zoltán Osztie … to remove this video from the parish’s online platforms and to refrain from such and similar statements”.