Austria’s far-right Freedom Party could win a national election for the first time when Austria votes on Sunday, tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns following recent gains for the hard right elsewhere in Europe.

Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and longtime campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor. He has used the term “Volkskanzler,” or chancellor of the people, which was used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Kickl has rejected the comparison.

CONSERVATIVE AUSTRIAN CHANCELLOR TO STAY IN COALITION WITH LEFT-WING GREENS DESPITE CONTROVERSIAL VOTE

But to achieve that, he would need a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament.

And a win isn’t certain, with recent polls pointing to a close race. They have put support for the Freedom Party at 27%, with the conservative Austrian People’s Party of Chancellor Karl Nehammer on 25% and the center-left Social Democrats on 21%.

Still, Kickl has achieved a turnaround since Austria’s last election in 2019. In June, the Freedom Party narrowly won a nationwide vote for the first time in the European Parliament election, which also brought gains for other European far-right parties.

In the 2019 election, its support slumped to 16.2% after a scandal brought down a government in which it was the junior coalition partner. Then-vice chancellor and Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache resigned following the publication of a secretly recorded video in which he appeared to offer favors to a purported Russian investor.

The far right has tapped into voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic. It also been able to build on worries about migration.

“You don’t really feel safe in your own country anymore. But then you’re being branded as right-wing just because you think about safety of your own people, the kids and women,” Margot Sterner, 54, said at a Freedom Party campaign event this month.

In its election program, the Freedom Party calls for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” and for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an “emergency law.”

Gernot Bauer, a journalist with Austrian magazine Profil who recently co-published an investigative biography of the far-right leader, said that under Kickl’s leadership, the Freedom Party has moved “even further to the right,” as Kickl refuses to explicitly distance the party from the Identitarian Movement, a pan-European nationalist and far-right group.

Bauer describes Kickl’s rhetoric as “aggressive” and says some of his language is deliberately provocative.

The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is highly critical of western military aid to Ukraine and wants to bow out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project launched by Germany.

The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led many of Austria’s post-World War II governments, has positioned himself as the polar opposite to Kickl. Andreas Babler — who is also mayor of the town of Traiskirchen, home to the country’s biggest refugee reception center — has ruled out governing with the far right and labeled Kickl “a threat to democracy.”

While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as junior partners, has declined since 2019.

During the election campaign, Nehammer portrayed his party, which has taken a tough line on immigration in recent years, as “the strong center” that will guarantee stability amid multiple crises.

But it is precisely these crises, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resulting rising energy prices, that have cost the conservatives support, said Peter Filzmaier, one of Austria’s leading political scientists.

Under their leadership, Austria has experienced high inflation averaging 4.2% over the past 12 months, surpassing the EU average.

The government also angered many Austrians in 2022 by becoming the first European country to introduce a coronavirus vaccine mandate, which was scrapped a few months later without ever being put into effect. And Nehammer is the third chancellor since the last election, taking office in 2021 after predecessor Sebastian Kurz — the winner in 2019 — quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

But the recent flooding caused by Storm Boris that hit Austria and other countries in Central Europe brought back the topic of the environment into the election debate and helped Nehammer slightly narrow the gap with the Freedom Party by presenting himself as a “crisis manager,” Filzmaier said.

The People’s Party is the far right’s only way into government.

Nehammer has repeatedly excluded joining a government led by Kickl, describing him as a “security risk” for the country, but hasn’t ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party in and of itself, which would imply Kickl renouncing a position in government.

The likelihood of Kickl agreeing to such a deal if he wins the election is very low, Filzmaier said.

But should the People’s Party finish first, then a coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party could happen, Filzmaier said. The most probable alternative would be a three-way alliance between the People’s Party, the Social Democrats and most likely the liberal Neos.

In a surprise change to his schedule, Pope Francis met with homeless and undocumented people in Brussels’ church of Saint-Gilles on Saturday morning. He learned about their lives over croissants and coffee.

10 people gathered around a table at the church of Saint Gilles in the centre of the city where they usually receive their breakfast outside.

The table was moved into the church to escape the rain. The group chatted with Pope Francis about their experiences and challenges.

They got a laugh from the pope when they gave him a gift of beer made by the parish to raise funds for charity, four bottles of La Biche de Saint Gilles.

Among the group was a migrant who made his way on a boat across the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa and then was thrown in prison.

He told the Pope he lost his will to pray. He has now found his faith again.

Father Benjamin Kabongo, a Franciscan friar who works with the homeless at Saint Gilles, said it was a very strong gesture for the pope to come and listen to these people that the world does not pay attention to.

Shortly after, he left for the Koekelberg Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where he addressed local bishops, priests and the Catholic community.

People read out letters in which they challenged the Pope and shared questions on various aspects of the Catholic church.

Responding to criticisms

Just a day earlier, Francis also received public criticisms from the Belgian king, prime minister and the rector of the Catholic university in Leuven.

The criticisms included the church’s cover-up of clergy sexual abuse to its refusal to respond to demands of women and LGBTQ+ Catholics for a place in the church.

Francis met with the people most harmed by the Catholic Church in Belgium — the men and women who were raped and molested by priests as children and the single mothers who were forced to give up their newborns for adoption to avoid the stigma of raising them out of wedlock.

Luc Sels, the rector of Leuven Catholic University, told the pope that the abuse scandals had so weakened the church’s moral authority that it would do well to reform, to the point of ordaining women as priests, if it wants to regain its relevance.

Through it all, Francis expressed his remorse, begged forgiveness and promised to do everything possible to make sure such abuses never occur again.

“This is our shame and humiliation,” he said in his first public remarks on Belgian soil.

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Pope Francis is on a four day trip to Luxembourg and Belgium.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslims on Saturday “to stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have and assist them in confronting the … wicked regime (of Israel).”