According to the Hungarian media outlet Válasz Online, Father Gergő Bese, the “star priest” of the Orbán regime, there were a series of documents proving that Mr Bese participated in gay parties and maintained intimate relationships with other men.
Things like that are, of course, part of private life, and should remain so. However, the case of Gergő Bese is different. He is one of the flag-bearers of Orbán’s political Christianity, a strong protector of Fidesz from critics from inside the church, an influencer regularly publishing pro-government writings, a public figure, and it seems a financial beneficiary of the Orbán cabinet.
Moreover, he kept slamming the LGBTQ movement, supporting and authenticating the government’s campaign by wearing a cassock.
He blessed PM Orbán’s office in Buda Castle’s Carmelite Monastery and the government-close Megafon Centre. He campaigned for the government during the 2022 general elections, writing that those voting for the opposition choose tuition fees in schools, unbearable payments in social institutes and the lockdown of village temples.
He slammed Hungarian singer Gabi Tóth because of her divorce and the drag queens performing at the 2024 Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony. Bese wrote about the LGBTQ ideology and its aim to conquer the world and how difficult it was for a kid living in a single-parent family to find an identity. That is when LGBTQ propaganda can find and “change” them, he argued.
He slammed the demonstration of church school teachers, Péter Magyar, whom he called the Judas of Fidesz, accepting the 30 pieces of silver.
In the last six years, Bese and his family received HUF 41 million (EUR 101 thousand) from a civil fund supporting almost only the Fidesz-close NGOs. Even though the two NGOs applying are officially led by Bese’s mother and sibling, his email address and phone number were given under the contact details. Apart from the subvention, they received more than HUF 60 million (EUR 152 thousand) through different programmes from the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, the Cultural Ministry and the Bethlen Gábor Fund. Moreover, he is renting the Regina Hungarorum in Medjugorje.
The Archbishop of Kalocsa-Kecskemét suspended Bese today.
The ones for whom the battle is a deeply personal one, originating from a struggle against a part of their own nature they find repugnant. They struggle against it, and seeing it not disappear, redouble their struggle, calling on God to help them. Some of them are led to join the church, attempting to find strength in its institution. And as their demons stubbornly refuse to disappear, they fight harder, becoming a public campaigner against them. Eventually, sooner or later, they have a moment of weakness.
Or, alternatively, they could simply not be fucking assholes about it.
Nice double entendre.
And they only find it repugnant, because their surroundings do.