Gift Presentation to Pope Leo XIV.
- Szendrei Judit
- May 10
- 3 min read
Splendour!
This picture was chosen when we decided to make a present to Pope Leo XIV to commemorate the first anniversary of his electing to be a pope. Its date, May 8 averted the issue of this newsletter for a week as we wanted to report on our personal meeting with him.
To one of the organizers draw our attention to the fact that it was not allowed to take photos organize this meeting was not an easy task of course so we wish to express our gratitude to the staff of the Papal Nunciature in Budapest! Tens of thousands of people gathers on these occasions on the St Peter’s Square but only circa three hundreds of them got the opportunity to meet the pope personally to have a short chat, a handshake and probably a personal blessing by him. These numbers are judged by ourselves as the organizers did not issue exact data. It is however an astonishing, uplifting feeling to be on the Square together with that many people. The queueing, which we had the possibility to experience is, on the other side tiresome. First time to get our tickets and secondly to get to our place right at the entrance of St Peter’s Basilica on the right side of the Papal Trone. The photos shown here were made by ourselves. The papamobil arrived at the Square at 9,45. At first he drove around the Square to greet people down the Square and after he took his place on the Trone, under the temporary baldachin.
He delivered his speech in Italian but greetings were made almost in all major languages of the Catholic Church and even in Chinese and Arabic.
After the greetings and the speech, the pope welcomed personally a small group pf people but this line of meetings was broken to let him to go to some selected groups of visitors waiting for him behind the Trone.
Our turn arrived around the middle of the selected people. When queuing one of the organizers draw our attention to the fact that it was not allowed to take photos by the visitors but we could purchase the ones made by the staff. And finally, we stood vis-à-vis pope Leo at around 11,00. After presenting ourselves we told to the pope that this picture was a unique one as I had painted already a picture with the use of this same stamp series, the one titled Lady of The Rosary. The Hungarian series of six stamps features icons exhibited in the Serbian Orthodox Museum in the city of Szentendre. The title of the icons is Mother of God with the Child. That time I used these stamps to paint the pearls of the rosary. We had been happy to have the opportunity to hand this picture personally over to pope Francis exactly on the on the day of the Lady of the Rosary in 2020 in Hall Paolo VI in Vatican City. By favour of the Hungarian Post we handed over a series of originals of the stamps while the pope blessed Zsofi by putting his both hands onto her had.
We, unfortunately, have not received yet the official photos from the press service so therefore here we can now present only the over-printed ones.
The fact that we had the opportunity to hand over our present to pope Leo aroused the interest of the Hungarian daily Nepszava who printed the following article in the May 9, Saturday issue (in Hungarian only):
The series of events were followed the same evening at the Hungarian Academy in Rome where the vice-director, Laszlo Berenye organized a discussion to talk about my pictures of ecclesiastical character. Among the participants were Peter Kveck, Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See, father Andras Toro, rector of the Hungarian Papal Institute and Hungarian young people. We took the copies of six pictures to this event among them those of the two “papal pictures”:
And also the following four of my portfolio:
The meeting was organized in the Red Saloon of the Academy. Some photos of the evening:
It was a very god discussion about the work of an artist, about art pieces and also about faith. Our contacts with the Academy started in 2020 and it was strengthened with my exhibition organized in 2021 titled Verso la Luce. We hope in a fruitful continuation! A photo from 2021:
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