Your Imperial and Royal Highness,
Distinguished President of the C.I.C.
Government Commissioner,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our One With Nature World of Hunting and Nature Exhibition is unique, but not without precedent, as it has been organized to commemorate the fiftieth Anniversary of the 1971 World Hunting Expo. That in turn was organized on the centenary of the Hungarian National Hunting Exhibition of 1871.

In September 2011, on the fortieth anniversary of the 1971 Expo, I proposed to the Hungarian hunting community that we should organise a new world exhibition in 2021; I announced this at the FeHoVa exhibition in 2015, and at the following year’s event I was able to confirm generous support for it from the Government of Hungary.

Such an event must be organised with a sense of grandeur, to its fullest extent! This is for at least two reasons. Firstly, it is demanded of us by our great hunting culture, which stems from the heritage we brought with us from Asia. Just think of the Turul, the Miracle Stag, or what Master Anonymus wrote in the Gesta Hungarorum about Hungarians being better hunters than the sons of other nations, because their young devoted much of their time to hunting. This heritage of ours reached its consummation here in Central Europe, with the hunting culture and art of the Habsburg Empire. And here we must also speak of our legendary game management – known and recognized far and wide, and closely linked to the impact of 1971, which is felt to this day.

Secondly, in Hungary there are about seventy thousand hunters, seven hundred thousand anglers, many thousands of sport shooters and archers, and I cannot even estimate the number of hunting dogs and horse riders. If one includes their family members, this is one quarter of the Hungarian nation.

But for us to do justice to the World Exhibition and stage it in a fitting manner, we first had to arrange hunting affairs in Hungary in a fitting manner. We have created a viable and rational gun law, we have put an end to the harassment of hunters and sport shooters, and also to the mentality left over from the years of socialism, when the state dreaded the thought of its citizens having guns. We can be justly proud of our hunting law, which I can venture to call the best in the world today. It provides for a twenty-year cycle, at least three thousand hectares of land, and a system of regional chief hunters. We have amply provided for the Chamber of Hunting – which operates a public body; and we have overseen a process of professional renewal at the Hunting magazine Nimród, which, with a circulation of eighty thousand, is now Hungary’s largest periodical! We have a symbiotic relationship with the C.I.C.; and we have not only arrived at a modus vivendi with our friends in nature conservation, but at a consensus – especially on the question of habitat development.

In relation to all the foregoing we owe a debt of gratitude to many, many friends. But while asking for the understanding of our other benefactors, here and now I would like to thank just one: Count József Károlyi, the World Exhibition’s first ministerial commissioner, whom we must thank for laying of the Exhibition’s national and international foundations, for the motto “One With Nature” and for the inspired logo!

Having looked at the background, let us turn to the World Exhibition itself. On a personal note, I have never been paid a penny for my work in hunting. I only bear the political risk – but I was predestined to do so by the fact that I took over the presidency of the National Hungarian Hunting Association a decade ago. Another factor was that as a child I was there in ’71. The memory of seeing the African trophies in the Tanzanian pavilion, for example, has remained with me. So that gift from back then is still with me today.

We face a more difficult situation now than in 1971, and in three respects: the anti-hunting attitude of mainstream media and politics; the consequent manipulations of certain Hungarian politicians and media figures; and the Covid pandemic.

We not only have to deal with green ideology, but with dark green ideology. We can make a sharp distinction between our green friends who make laudable efforts to protect nature, and “eco-terrorists’’ of the dark green ideology – who often tend to be anti-human. It is strange but instructive that their ideology and policies claim to celebrate nature in relation to animals and plants, but denigrate nature in relation to society. We, following the order of creation, protect the order of nature in every respect, giving every being its own dignity as it deserves, according to the order of nature.

Of course it is not easy for us in this world, which is disconnected from nature and its order, where many children believe that cows are purple because they have never seen a real cow in their lives – only the purple cow on a chocolate wrapper. Or they think that deer are like Walt Disney’s Bambi – which, of course, has nothing whatever to do with either deer or the reality of nature. The mission of the World Exhibition is also to respond to anti-hunting demagoguery, by demonstrating the following: a hunting culture that stems from human anthropology; the freedom of sustainable hunting; and the necessity and rationality of game management.

We are staging the exhibition with the aim of completeness, including everything related to hunting: dog, horse and falconry shows; fishing, shooting and archery world competitions; art in hunting and hunting in art; game and fish gastronomy; and scientific world conferences. All this with the aid of 21st-century technology.

As with all things in the world, there are some unpleasant phenomena in hunting that we need to reflect on. Classical moral theology distinguishes between the actus humanus and the actus hominis. The actus humanus is a humane act, the actus hominis is the act of a human, but it cannot be called humane. To illustrate this with an example, wine can be linked to both a tasting session in a wine cellar in Tokaj, but also to someone staggering out of a tavern after having drunk adulterated alcohol. The former is an actus humanus, the latter an actus hominis. In the same way, the hunting of Count Zsigmond Széchenyi is an example of actus humanus, while the destruction of game animals by criminals is an actus hominis. Incidentally, it is no coincidence that the Hatvan Hunting Museum is named after Count Zsigmond Széchenyi. The extraordinary quality of hunting culture is that it creates a unity from the anthropological range of human existence, in the complexity of nature and culture – from the passion for hunting to – for example – the Saint Hubertus Mass!

I have been asked this question: don’t I think that the tributes paid to the Expo of 1971 represent the apotheosis of the communist Kádár regime? No, I do not! The fact is that there have been two symbolic high points in Hungarian hunting: the Tótmegyer estate of Count Lajos Károlyi, and 1971. But just as Tótmegyer is not about Governor Miklós Horthy, neither is ’71 about János Kádár, First Secretary of the Party. So, for example, what Archduke Joseph did can be directly linked to Archduke Joseph, and what was shot by Pál Losonczi is likewise Pál Losonczi’s. This is an event about hunting, not politics; we are not falsifying history!

Because we aim for completeness, in line with the diversity of the exhibition we have asked curators who have already carried out similar large projects to each be responsible for a large area of the exhibition – from the world of water to that of art. I thank them for their professionalism and – although many of them are not hunters – for their enthusiasm. This is another reason why what Government Commissioner Zoltán Kovács and I have said will turn out to be true: the World Hunting Exhibition will attract one million visitors!

It is important to mention that we consider it our gastronomic mission to promote game and fish dishes, and to incorporate them into the options offered in public institutions. For if anything is truly organic, then it is game meat and fish. In this case its organic status is not just a marketing label: it is definitely free of antibiotics and is biologically the richest of foods. In this respect it promotes the health of people and thus the future of our nation.

Sustainable hunting is at the heart of our World Exhibition, so I am especially pleased to report that almost every element will be preserved, and in fitting locations: from the Laudato si’ place of prayer, through the Carpathian Basin pavilion built by people from Transylvania, to the stag’s head built from ten tonnes of antlers, which symbolises the unity of Hungarian hunters and which acts as the gate welcoming visitors. The latter which will be relocated to Keszthely. And Budapest will be enriched with the central venue for our exhibition: a rebuilt HUNGEXPO, which first hosted the International Eucharistic Congress, swiftly followed now by the World of Hunting Exhibition; and in the future it will play its role in the tourism and economic reopening following the pandemic, and host hundreds of events for a lifetime.

This exhibition is important, but more important is the lesson and the message it embodies and teaches. Its most important aspect is its intellectual and spiritual content, proclaiming the order of nature. In this it shows that, from a human perspective, ninety-nine per cent of all our ancestors hunted – and if they had not been successful hunters, we would not be here. So the passion for hunting is part of human nature. Today the ingrained legacy of this is our hunting culture. And from the perspective of nature, it is demonstrated by the fact that without hunting the balance between game animals, forest and agriculture cannot be sustained, and neither can the diversity of wildlife and quality of game.

From Africa to Central Asia, it is an instructive observable fact that wherever hunting is abolished, game populations are destroyed, and that where there is support and investment for hunting and game management, game populations increase in quantity and quality. Because if there is no legal hunting, there is also no money to protect game against poachers, and there are also countless examples of local people destroying game with fire, iron and poison in order to protect their smallholdings. But where there is hunting, game management and hunting tourism, there is money for game protection; and because hunting is profitable, the local people have neither the ability nor the desire to destroy game. To give you a specific example, in Kenya hunting has been banned, and so across much of the country game has disappeared; meanwhile Namibia is building on hunting tourism, and so there they have a fantastic abundance of game.

In the opening pages of the Bible we read that God created the world as a garden, into which He placed man to cultivate and care for it. So, according to the Scriptures, there are two mistakes that man can make. One is to plunder nature, and fail to value it. Today this is the rampant industrial lobby, which would turn the world into an industrial park, concreting over every square foot of space. The other mistake is to leave our environment to its fate; because then it will not be a garden, but a chaotic shambles. Just as a gardener tends to a garden, we must tend to the forests, fields and game stock entrusted to us. This is why I use the following analogy: the rifle on the shoulder of the true hunter is like the pruning shears in the hands of the gardener.

The inspirational effect of the 1971 Budapest World Hunting Expo is still felt today. May God grant that our “One With Nature” World Hunting Exhibition bears similar fruit in our hunting culture, game and nature management, so that it can be enjoyed by our successors when they organise another world hunting exhibition in 2071!

Respect to the game, salutations to the hunter, all glory to the Creator!