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Tristan Azbej awarded the Commander Cross Pro Merito Melitensi
Budapest, January 20, 2022. Tristan Azbej, Secretary of State for Assistance to Persecuted Christians and responsible for implementing the "Hungary Helps" aid program, was awarded the Commander Cross Pro Merito Melitensi by the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of Malta.
The award was presented by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Order to Hungary, HE Imre Ugron.
“The Pro Merito Melitensi merit award serves to recognize the merits that help fulfill the mission of the Order, which has remained unchanged for more than nine hundred years: to protect the faith and to support the sick and needy. We have been working with the Hungary Helps programme for years to help Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere. Our joint work includes the reconstruction of a destroyed hospital in the Nineveh region of Iraq, and support for the reconstruction and resumption of life in the Christian quarter of Beirut, which was seriously damaged by the 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut."
"The Order of Malta provides assistance in 120 countries around the world, either alone or in collaboration with governments and other organizations. Personally, Tristan Azbej has done much to ensure the success of the cooperation agreement concluded in 2019 between the Sovereign Order of Malta and the State Secretariat for Assistance to Persecuted Christians, and to provide local assistance to those in need, with the support of the Hungarian government" - said Ambassador Imre Ugron at the award ceremony.
Receiving the award, Tristan Azbej remarked that it is of special value to receive such recognition from an organization that has more than 900 years of experience in supporting those in need, and that is a "comrade in arms" of the five-year Hungary Helps program. He added that, based on his experience in working together, he can testify that we are not only givers - in Lebanon and Syria among others - but we are also recipients: of their prayers and of their living example of the strong faith that Europe now desperately needs.
Marwan Sehnaoui, President of the Association of Knights of Malta in Lebanon, was present at the award ceremony, and had warm words of praise for the Christian commitment of Tristan Azbej, for his hard work and for the fraternal spirit in which the Hungary Helps program is helping the Lebanese people.
The event was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén; Miklós Vecsei, Commissioner at the Prime Ministry and Vice-President of the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta; Kristóf Szabadhegÿ, President of the Hungarian Association of the Order of Malta, and Lajos Győri-Dani, Executive Vice President of the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta.
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